Matt and Karen's Scotland Trip

(click on any of the pictures for a larger version)

Day 5: Urquhart Castle, Culloden, and Clava Cairns

Thursday morning we got up and went to Urquhart Castle, which is near Drumnadrochit, on Loch Ness. (No, we didn't go hunting for Nessie.) It was a dreary day, drizzling off and on, so the view of Loch Ness wasn't as stunning as it could have been. The castle was very interesting; it was built in the 1100s and left in ruins in 1692. It was involved in fighting just about the whole time it stood; apparently the Scots were quite happy to fight amongst themselves when they weren't fighting the English. This castle was often raided by the Macdonalds, Lords of the Isles.

First, some shots of Loch Ness from the castle:

loch ness loch ness loch ness loch ness loch ness

Here are some shots looking down at the castle. It really wasn't in the most defensible position, except for being right on the loch.

This is a trebuchet. I would have called it a catapult.

trebuchet

A couple photos of us:

us at urquhart us at urquhart

And some general castle photos.

After Urquhart Castle, we drove to Inverness, the only town in the Highlands with more than 10,000 people. We had lunch at a pub--Matt had haggis, believe it or not--and did a bit of shopping, but mostly we could have skipped it.

From Inverness we drove east to Culloden Battlefield, where the last land battle on British soil took place in 1746. We walked around a bit, but mostly it's an enormous graveyard. It was interesting seeing the burial markers for all the clans that fought there. We also learned that the National Trust is allowing sheep to graze on the battlefield, because they're trying to keep it in the condition it was in during the battlefield instead of letting trees grow. They use black sheep because they do less damage. Here are some sheep.

sheep

Those aren't the only sheep we saw. We're completely convinced that there really are more sheep than people in Scotland.

After Culloden we stopped at Clava Cairns, mostly because they were just about a mile from the battlefield. They were more interesting than either of us expected. It's a burial site from the Bronze Age; there are three cairns surrounded by stone circles.

cairn matt in cairn cairn and stones standing stones

That afternoon we drove to Craigellachie for the night. We probably would have stopped off at a couple other things, except there was construction on the road, and it took us forever to get from Nairn to Elgin. Sitting in construction is no more fun on the left side of the road than it is on the right.

We found a great inn in Craigellachie--had a delicious meal, then spent the evening in the pub chatting with locals and with some English tourists. The bartender was Japanese, and his accent was, to our ears, highly amusing. Matt cracked up every time he said "aye."

Days 1-2 | Days 3-4 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Days 6-8 | Index