Final Adventures in the Land of the Scots

OK. Most of you know that I'm coming back to the States next week. I went on two more day trips this past week with a friend of mine and that's about all I'll be doing during my last few days.

The first trip was on Monday to Castle Campbell which is just outside a town called Dollar. Dollar is only about 30 minutes, by bus, from Stirling which we took a train to in about an hour. Not too much travel time there. It's a pretty cheap trip too. Once you get to Dollar, the way to the castle is pretty well marked so on we went! No one told us it would be a 30-minute hike up hill to get there, though. My legs were screaming at me when we reached the top. Then, of course, there was scaffolding covering an entire side of the castle, so that was very uncool.

Really, Castle Campbell is quite tiny. It's mostly just a shell of what it used to be and quite unimpressive if you've seen other castles such as Dunnottar and the like. If you get to Scotland and you want to go to Castle Campbell, make it your first castle. Trust me. The hike up and back was gorgeous though. Everything was so GREEN! I can't say I've ever seen anywhere so green before. There was a little creek running along the entire trail and every once in a while there would be a waterfall. The water was so clear. Everywhere you looked, the view was breathtaking.

As I said, the castle itself was unimpressive, but the views from the top of it and from the hillside above were amazing. It was a beautiful day for a walk, too. Sunny, but not too hot. If I had been going on a nature walk/hike, my day would easily have been fulfilled. Not much else to talk about there.

Tuesday, Dana and I had booked a bus tour to Rosslyn Chapel and part of Hadrian's Wall. We booked through "Heart of Scotland Tours" and ended up with a medium-size bus. That does not mean it was small, though. It was still quite large and there were only 9 people in our group including Dana and I! We had a great tour guide. His name was Davey. Very entertaining, though he did tend to ramble sometimes.

Our first stop, once we got out of rush hour in Edinburgh, was Rosslyn Chapel. Unfortunately, there was scaffolding all over the roof and inside the ceiling here too, but it's for preservation purposes. The chapel is over 600 years old and after 1592, it wasn't used for 270 years. The St. Clairs who had built it refused to use it as a Protestant church and wished it to remain Catholic so they closed the doors, boarded up the windows and took out many of the relics and the altars. Before it was restored, Oliver Cromwell stabled his horses there while attacking the nearby Rosslyn Castle. I don't know the exact date of this. However, one thing which baffles many people is that Cromwell did not order the church to be destroyed. He had attacked many castles before and left them as piles of rubble, but for some reason he kept this one standing.

In 1862, Queen Victoria told the Earl that she wanted it to be used again so a restoration of the chapel was begun. However, it was not enough to save the chapel. Even through the 1950's, if you have entered, the walls would have been green and black with mold. Know why? It's the sandstone. Sandstone is a very porous stone. It absorbed the water throughout the centuries and during the first restoration, a sort of cement wash was painted onto the walls. This did more damage than good, though. It trapped the moisture and did not allow the sandstone to dry out. So now the cement wash is gone and 14 years ago, a £13 million project was begun to dry it out, save the carvings and ultimately save the entire chapel. You see, the Earl was told that if he did not do something soon, the chapel would not be standing for much longer. Now, they are almost finished. The walls are gray-tinted thanks to that cement wash, but they are drying out. The first order of business when the restoration began was to put an enormous metal canopy over the top so as to keep the chapel from rain and snow. This has allowed it to slowly dry out. The canopy is supposed to come down in June of this year.

They have been restoring every inch of the chapel. If you've heard of the famous "Prentice Pillar", you may have also heard the rumor that the Holy Grail is actually hidden inside it. In recent years a man came in with an axe intent on finding the grail inside the pillar. He was restrained, but to be sure, x-rays were done of all the pillars. They are simply stone. As I said, every inch of the chapel has been restored, including the floor. When doing a scan of the ground below the tiles, they found vaults beneath the floor, some even as deep as the chapel is high. Men, women and children of the St. Clair family have been buried there since the chapel was first built. There is an entrance in the floor of the chapel to the vaults, but it was known to be sealed as early as 1750. For 250 years at least, no one has been down there. Many people speculate about what is also hidden down there besides the bodies of past St. Clairs. Some say Templar Treasure, the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant (Indiana Jones has been looking in the wrong place). No one is allowed to investigate though. The current Earl wishes his ancestors to remain undisturbed. So we'll just have to keep speculating until someone does get access.

Well, on to Hadrian's Wall! Have you seen Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves? With Kevin Costner? There's a scene in the beginning where Robin Hood is attacked by knights and it was filmed at a place along Hadrian's Wall called Sycamore Gap. It's literally just a dip in the land at the center of which grows a Sycamore tree. Very steep walk. Very... steep. We had to park quite a ways off and then walk down a hill, back up, then down slightly and back up, then down two more steep hills and up to get to Sycamore Gap... If you'll remember, I had a bit of a hike to and from Castle Campbell the day before. I was still in pain. I'm proud that I made it, honestly. It was worth it, though. Very beautiful walk, beautiful views and such a feeling of being in history.

For those of you who don't know, Hadrian's Wall was built by the Roman emperor Hadrian's legions at the original border between Roman-occupied Britain and the part of Britain occupied by the Picts and the Celts and other tribes. It was never meant to withstand a siege, but rather to control the flow of people. After all, it would have been easy just to sail around it. You can look up more history, but that's the gist.

On the way back to Edinburgh, we stopped in Melrose and saw the Abbey there. Beautiful ruins. We got there just before 5 and the last admittance is at 5. We were sort of out of luck with the rest of the town too when it came to getting a coffee or souvenirs or anything. Every place closed at 5.

I had a final the next morning. That's not relevant to this blog, though. Just setting up a time line. I finished the exam, turned in my last paper and headed for the Royal Mile. Dana and I ate at the Elephant Café. It's where JK Rowling first began writing Harry Potter. Some of you may realize that I ate there at the beginning of my time here, but Dana hadn't gotten to yet. And I like it. It's a cute little place.

After lunch, I was finally off to see Edinburgh Castle in all its splendor. It was a sort of dreary day, but it was warm and not too windy. I couldn't believe how beautiful the views from the castle walls were. For those who do not know, Edinburgh Castle is built on an old volcanic plug. The formation it makes with the Royal Mile is called a crag and tail formation. When the glaciers cut their way through, the volcanic rock was too hard for them to grind down so they parted around it. On all three sides, the softer rock was ground away, but the last side created the tail part of the formation. Stirling Castle was built the same way. This is a great defense as well.

Not all of the castle is open to the public, of course and I saw as much as I could, but it did not take me as long as I expected. I think quite a bit more was roped off then than normally is off limits. Not sure why, but it definitely looked like many of the areas that I was unable to get to were usually open to visitors. Oh well. I still enjoyed myself a lot up there. Beautiful views, rich history... can't really ask for much more.

I finished up my souvenir shopping after that and headed back to my flat. As of now I have only 5 and a half days left in Edinburgh. It's been my favorite place out of everywhere I've visited. I love this city. It's not too big, but you still have that feel of being in a major city. It's the second largest in Scotland. I love that I can walk 5 minutes or less in any direction and find so many different things. I'm maybe 10 minutes from the Royal Mile and/or Princes Street so shopping is easy. The transportation is wonderful. I really have loved my time here and I'm sad to leave, but I'll be glad to be home and see my friends and family... not to mention eat the foods I've missed like Chipotle... and those tacos in Fayetteville. Well, I believe that is all for now. I'll post maybe once more, but otherwise this blog has reached its end. Thank you for reading!

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