We decided to have a castle free day today, so a good part of our morning was the drive up into the Scottish Highlands (see my trivia note at the very end of this blog) and visit some different old stuff.
The Clava Cairns, or more correctly, “The Balnuaran of Clava” are Stone Circles combined with Stone Mounds, and are very different to the “regular” Stone Circle sites we have all heard of and/or visited. They date back to 4000BC, and were used as Bronze Age tombs. There are 4 Stone Circles in the area we visited (there is said to be many more in the area), 3 of which were large with stone burial mounds in the centre of a stone circle, and 1 small one with just a small stone circle and a burial pit at its centre. Two of the mounds had an astronomical alignment for the entrance passage into them, they aligned with the sunrise of the winter solstice. I found them intriguing but they lacked the presence/connection I get from the Neolithic Stone Circles we have visited.
We then headed to The Battlefields of Culloden. Those of you who saw the TV series “Outlander” will be familiar with the story behind this very historic event in Scottish history. Very briefly, this is the site of the 1746 Battle that broke the Jacobite uprising. On the fateful day of 16 April, 7000 Jacobite sympathisers faced off against 8000 seasoned British army troops on the sodden boggy grounds of Culloden. Once the battle started it took the British around 1 hour to defeat the Jacobites, killing or wounding about 2000 of them, and setting the remainder in a retreat. The leaders of the Jacobites and supporting Clan Chieftains were persued and either killed, arrested and executed or transported, had all their land stripped from them and their powers removed. The English passed draconian laws against the Scottish to prevent such an uprising ever happening again. I am sure this just added to the historical hatred of the English by the Scots. While the fields had a “presence” to them for the carnage that occurred there, the site didn’t hold the same atmospheric feelings that “Battle” near Hastings did for us. Even allowing for the Scottish weather effects we got while out in the fields (yes, it rained while we were out there)
From Culloden we drove to Moray Firth, as the name implies, is a stretch of coastal waters near where many rivers flow into. It has been called by National Geographic as one of the Worlds most beautiful coastlines. We got it at low tide and it just didn’t do it for us. It is similar to many coastal areas we have seen, but to rate it that highly was a stretch for us. The views across the Firth were good (perhaps spoilt a bit by the mist/rain).
From there it was a short drive to Inverness. A grey but pretty city on the banks of the River Ness (yes, of Loch Ness fame – I figure Nessie swam upstream from here and got land locked). We had a drive around and stopped to take a pic of the Castle.
We finished our day with a short drive onto our accommodation for the night.
And I bet you thought that was the end of todays blog, well so did we, however, without naming our hotel, it seems we are staying at Scotland’s version of Faulty Towers, complete with towers. We were greeted by “Basil” on reception, she wasn’t coping well, the computer had just shutdown and she had “customers” to deal with! We asked to book into the restaurant at 6pm for dinner. Basil said they were very busy at 6pm and could we make it 7pm, or we could eat in the bar area, we said we wanted 6pm and that the bar was fine. I went to reception a bit later to get a cup and milk for our room. While I waited, Basil was organising a taxi for an older woman who was wearing sunglasses. Her flight left at 10:30am and she wanted a taxi for 8:30am, Basil convinced her 9am would be early enough, and then sunglasses wanted a wake up call for 6:30am so she could bath and do her hair in the morning.
At 6pm we went to the bar and met “Manuel”, an Asian woman working in Scotland, her English wasn’t the best. We ordered drinks and asked if we could have dinner in the restaurant, we sat and sipped our drinks in the lounge. Manuel had disappeared! After a while we walked to the restaurant and asked if we had a table booked. Yes they said, and took us in. It was just after 6pm, there was now us and sunglasses dining by herself in the “very busy” restaurant. We ordered and then a waiter brought us “Canapes”, and set them as far away from us on the table as possible. The same was done shortly after with some olive oil / balsamic with bread. We ordered, at about 6:20pm and another couple came in. They ordered the 5 course sample menu. Sunglasses finished her starter and was given a large bowl of leaves with avocado on top. She sat, straight backed, and nibbled her way through it. Meanwhile, our mains arrived. The second couple were on their 2nd course, sunglasses still nibbling her lettuce and we enjoyed the entertainment and our meals. We ordered a cheese plate to finish, it arrived and the waiter put it as far away from us as possible, we both smirked when the waiter said one of the cheeses was a “Minger”. Our cheeses were good, sunglasses had finished her leaves and ordered desert, 5 course sample couple got their desert (5 courses served in about 1hr!) and we admired the view out the window. We could hear the waiter coming back by the clip-clop of his shoes on the floor and asked for our bill. As we left at 7:30pm, sunglasses was well into her desert, 5 course couple were almost done, there were now 11 people dining in the restaurant, including us. The poor chef, he must have been exhausted, slammed at 6pm and then a steady trickle of mouths to feed over the next hour! An entertaining night. ?
Some trivia for you:
The Scottish Highlands is an historic region of Scotland. It is the area to the north of the Highland Boundary Fault. The fault separates the hard igneous and metamorphic rocks to the north from the softer sedimentary rocks of the Scottish Lowlands in the south. (Wiki)
“Inver” as in Inverness, Invercargill, etc refers to the mouth or estuary of a river, so the city/town name of Inverness refers to the settlement found at the mouth of the River Ness.
Sounds like an entertaining evening!