3 days in the Lakes

Last year England's Lakes District was designated a World Heritage Area. It is beautiful albeit over run by tourists in some of the small towns.

Walking in the footsteps on Sheryl's ancestors on a 6.5km walk along a disused railway line and public footpaths near Broughton-on-Furness near where we are staying on the southern edge of the Lakes District. Sheryl has a lot of history around here.

 In the heart of the Lakes District - a 9km walk around the lakes of Grasmere and Rydal, where William Wordsworth lived.

 Check out this fence up on the mountainside.

 Oak trees are amazing

 There were a couple of large caves above Rydal Water.

Grasmere, nearing the end of our walk. We rewarded ourselves with iced coffee and shopping. 

We also went to see Mamma Mia: Here we go again at the quaint old art deco cinema in Ulverston. It was raining. They had an old fashioned intermission halfway through the movie with a fellow selling snacks in the cinema.

Tomorrow, weather permitting, we are planning to walk up Scafell Pike. This is a big one - England's tallest mountain! 

Goodbye Scotland - An Ayrshire week

A week in Ayrshire, the south west of Scotland. We have been combing graveyards again for S and T's ancestors. We also went to Wigtown - Scotland's book town.

Most of the shops in Wigtown are second hand book shops! There are 13 of them!

Real bookshops!

Full of books!

Hidden away.

And there was a library as well.

More castles. Culzean Castle is an impressive country home over looking the sea to Aran. Its early nasty owners once kidnapped, oiled and roasted a neighbour alive until he relented and gave them the land they wanted. I always knew the real estate business could be cut-throat but that was a bit extreme!

Even the cow and pig sheds where we ate lunch and watched a pipe band from Canada, look like a castle.

Drumlanrig Castle has over 300 years of history and still belongs to the same family. Several years ago one of their paintings was stolen during a guided tour. The thieves took it from the wall while the guide was not looking and passed it out of the window! It was a Leonadro Da Vinci painting worth over £100 million! Unlike most historic homes which are furnished in a style to suit their age, house is filled with original treasures belonging to the family. They did get their Da Vinci painting back.

We hopped on the ferry for a day trip to Aran. Aran was beautiful.

Did you know that the granite discs used in the sport of curling are all made from stone from Ailsa Craig off the west coast of Ayrshire?

The week ended a little sadly as we had to return Tanya to her friends for their return to Tassie.  Lucky, we had a dozen rolls of toilet paper in the boot of the car, in case of teary goodbyes. (We bought way more toilet paper than we needed)

Sadly, tomorrow we say goodbye to Scotland. (We are going down to the Lakes district in England.)We might need that toilet paper after all.

Men in kilts

I really did want to attend a highland games while in Scotland but it seemed impossible to find one that was on at the right date at a location that matched our location. But, we had a few days near my McNab and MaLaren lands and we saw the sign, literally. There was a banner advertising the games on the day we were checking out.

Men in kilts

 And bagpipes

And parading clans

Throwing 16lb, 22lb and 48lb balls.

Dancing all day

Lone piping competitions

More dancing

A clan leader

Tossing the caber (picture a power pole)

More ball throwing. I could have watched these blokes all day. Oh, that's right - we did.

Tug of war

These particular games at Lochearnhead have been run here since 1818. It was wonderful to be able to watch a real local highland games. After sitting on the ground beside the arena all day, we drove for about 2 hours to our next location in Ayr. We could still hear the bagpipes playing in our heads as we went to sleep that night.

Unicorns are real

There are a lot of unicorns at Stirling Castle.

Dating back to 1110 at least, it was the castle of the Stewart (Stuart) kings. It was the centre of numerous battles and sieges, especially between Scotland and the English.

James V built a new palace here for his new French wife, the mother of Mary, Queen of Scots born in 1543.

They liked tapestries. They had over a hundred of them. Not only where they a status symbol of their wealth but they helped make the big stone cold castle warm and homey.

This recently recreated series of seven unicorn tapesteries took over ten years to make.

So, the walls of the queen's apartments are covered in unicorn tapestries, but, wait, there are more unicorns...

I like horses. Unicorns are horses. 

Seriously though, Stirling Castle is one of the best of the thousands of Scottish castles. Its history is long and violent and interesting. It has a fabulous location on a high hill overlooking plains, rivers and fields and town of Stirling, and out to the first of the Highland mountains. They also have excellent scones in the cafe.