Death

We are currently staying in a cottage which is surrounded by ancestors! Not mine. S and T both have lots and lots to the north and south of Inverness. I am pretty sure S and T must be cousins.

We went to Culloden Battlefield. This boggy patch of moorland is where 8,000 English government soldiers and some Scottish supporters faced off against 5,000 Scottish Jacobites who supported Bonnie Prince Charles Stuart's claim to the British throne. They had been fighting for decades over who should be king of Scotland and England. The Jacobites lost. This was the end of their cause and a major turning point in Scottish history.

It is a war memorial to the men on both sides who fought for who they believed should be king. There are plaques set up close to where different groups lined up prior to the battle.

There is also a large stone cairn and numerous stones that were placed on the field in the 1880s. This is one is one of mine. The Camerons were in the front line with S's Clan Chattan. The McNabs and the McLarens were there too, all on the Jacobite side.

We all found Culloden Battlefield and its interpretation centre very moving and informative.

Nearby are the Clava cairns - 4,000 years old. There are 3 large round burial cairns and numerous standing stones here. Quite impressive and mysterious. 

More dead people. I won't bore you with multiple pictures of graveyards and churches and fields where our ancestors might have lived and farmed and died but here are two. This is S at Croy where she found many Roses and others.

This is in one of T's cemeteries. It looks out over scenery remarkedly similar to Tassie's Tamar Valley.

Honouring the dead has always been an important part of human cultures. That connection with the past helps us to understand who we are now.