The highlands, Scotland by Mel

Hello from the highland in Scotland!
Let me start by saying how beautiful this place is!!! I might repeat it a few times during this blog. I think we all fall in love with Scotland!
Anyway, we drove from Stirling to Nairn, which is a wee bit north of Inverness. It took us around 2 and a half hours to get there. We are in a really nice little house with a greenhouse/ rest area at the back, with grapes and plums growing there! We love it!
We arrived on Monday the 18th of August. When we arrived, we did a bit of shopping as usual and found some vegetarian haggis! Yeah! The important part of the Haggis is the grains and herbs to get that great taste, so the meat is not mandatory.
We settled and did some blogging and schoolwork. For dinner we tried the vegetarian haggis and the regular one (well the other 3 did). They still think the meat one is better, but I really enjoyed my vegetarian one!
The next day, we visited Fort George which is just a short drive from Nairn. This fort was built after the battle of Culloden to make sure a Jacobite revolt would not happen again. They wanted to have a fort to keep a hand on the region. The construction started in 1748, 2 years after Culloden. History will tell us that the battle of Culloden was the end of the Jacobite revolt, and this fort would never be used as a defence fort. They will use it to train highlander as British soldier and is still in use now.
The fort is on a point between the north sea and the Moray firth (Firth is the Scottish word for estuary). When you are on the rampart, you have a splendid view of the surrounding areas.
The fort is well kept as it is still in use today. There was some dress up for us to try, which we did of course.
There is also a museum about the highlander: the Scottish army corp. There is a lot to see there. The kids had a paper with some things to find. All the museum we have been in, have things for the kids to do. There are often pretty well done.
At the far end of the fort, if you are lucky, you can look above the rampart and see some dolphin in the firth, and we did! This was really cool.
We then had sandwich on the side of the water, where of course some ricochets were done and a throwing rock in the water activity happened!
In the afternoon we did some archery. We booked one hour and it went pretty fast! After an introduction on how to hold the bow, put the arrow in and how to lose the arrow, we were off to 3 different areas: one with dinosaurs, one with zombies and one with dragons to try to shoot them all! Kev did great and won all the challenges we did of course. The kids did great and hit the aim several times. I did hit some target.. Not a lot though! It was still fun. Allan, our instructor, was very patient, great with the kids and overall a great instructor. We had a great time there and could have stay there a lot longer!!! But everything has an end and we got back to our lovely place for a bit of blogging, food, tv and bed.
On the 20th, we spend the morning on the site of the battle of Culloden. I have to do a little history lesson here!
In 1714, Anne (from the house of Stuart), queen of England and Scotland, died with no children. The crown passed to George I (from the house of Hanover, related to the Sturat by his grandmother), a protestant king. But many Scottish people thought that the rightful owner of the crown were the Stuart family, who were catholic. Prince Charles Edward Stuart (also called, Bonnie Prince Charlie) tried to reclaim the throne for his father, who were called King James VIII by its supporter. James being Jacobus in Latin, its supporters were called the Jacobite.
The official king by them was George II and his son, who was at the head of the English army (the government army) was the Duke of Cumberland.
Prince Charles arrived in Scotland and started a rebellion in August 1745. French troops were supposed to support him, but for various reasons they never showed up! His army grew though and some battles were won, some lost.
On April 15, the government army celebrated the Duke of Cumberland’s birthday. The Jacobite thought that they could attack them during the night while they were sleeping their brandy off.
But by lack of communication and organisation, they did not arrive in time. Some part of the army got lost. They decided to retreat, and some arrived on the site of Culloden where they met the government army. By then, the Jacobite army was tired, hungry and some part of it never made it to the battle.
The battle was over in one hour and 1500-2000 Jacobite were killed or wounded.
The battle was very brief and the Jacobite were defeated. They were chased and killed during the days following the battle. This battle marked the end of the Jacobite revolt and the end of the Scottish clan system. Bagpipes, tartan, kilt, speaking Gaelic were forbidden after that and people were severely punished if they were caught breaking the rules.
The site in itself today, is a beautiful land with flowers and plants growing everywhere. There is now memorial cairns, grave marker and clan marker on the site to honour the clan and people who fought there.
We also did the museum, which is full of artifacts found on the site and historical explanation from both side (the Jacobite and the English). It is well worth a visit.
After that, we drove to Inverness, only a few kilometres away and visit the city. We found the biggest Scottish second-hand bookshop called Leakey’s bookshop. This is a massive shop with books everywhere. I could live there! Just get me a mattress somewhere and I’ll be fine!
The kids got a book each as they are missing reading ‘real’ book (as they only have Kindle books for the last 8 months!).
We walked in the city, along the river Ness, visited the St Andrew’s cathedral, found a small botanical garden and finished the day at a pub for some live music.
We already had some sandwich for dinner to avoid having to pay for an expensive dinner. We wanted to just have a couple of drinks, so we didn’t book a table. When we arrived at one of the famous pub of Inverness, we got told that kids can not be at the bar, so we need a table, which were all booked… We tried a second pub, and same issue. Our third try was the good one! They had a couple of free tables, just in front of the music. We sat at our table, order drinks and enjoy a duo, one singer/guitarist and one guitarist, singing Scottish and Irish songs for a few hours. The kids spend most of their evening reading the books we bought earlier that day.
It was a lovely day.
The next day, we visited the Urquart Castle, which is located on the shore of the Loch Ness. The drive there is beautiful. Hills and plains, warm colours of Scotland in Summer, just enchanting.
The Urquhart Castle was built, as often on a previous medieval castle site in the 13th century. During the next 500 years, the castle was passed back and forth between the hand of the English and Scottish. Even when the Scottish were holding it, some clans were fighting over it! During the 17th century, the last English people to hold it, blow it up when they evacuated to prevent the reoccupation by the Jacobite. After that, it was never rebuilt.
It is a lovely castle to visit with magnificent views and interesting facts.
We visited a cairn, which is burial or memorial site. In this case it was a burial site. For many years, people thought it was for a chief of a clan, but latter study show that the position the body was in, was more typical of woman burial. It would have been a very important woman, because of the size of the cairn, probably why people thought it was a man! But anyway, the site was interesting to see.
On the way back, we stopped to look at highland cows, which have long hair and massive horns. They are very typical of the region and it was fun seeing them close. They are pretty!
Then back to our place for our regular evening things.
On Friday the 22nd of August, we did something I was looking forward to: we saw the Jacobite train, which is the train used to film the outside view of the Hogwarts Express train in the movies! I am a Harry Potter fan (the book, more than the movies but I don’t mind the movies) but I refuse to give anymore money to JK Rowling (as she use it to try to destroy trans people rights), which mean we don’t buy anything HP related: but the Jacobite train is free, so nothing goes to her!
We drove there (it took a couple of hours from where we are) and thought we were there early enough…Not to get a parking place though! The parking was full, so we had to park further up the road, and there is not much more space, so we park somewhere we were not supposed to, but we saw on our way back that a lot more people did what we did!
We hiked to the Glenfinnan viaduct: we hiked fast, as we had to walked from further than plan and I didn’t want to miss it! When we got there, there was already a lot of people, but we found a good place and waited. The train arrived nice and slow on the viaduct and slowed down to a stop toward the middle, then the driver did the whistle and let the smoke out. I forgot to mention that the Jacobite train is a steam engine. Then the wheel started turning with that very specific train wheel sound: tch, tch, tch… slowly then faster and faster and it keep going. It was a bit of a magical moment. People in the train were waving and we waved back. I know it is just a train, but I like it very much! The we hiked back toward the car a bit slower this time, and we enjoy the magnificent views of the surrounding Scotland.
We drove for around 20 minutes to get to the Steall waterfall. The hike there took as around 40 minutes in, I know I said it before, but breathtakingly beautiful landscapes. The hike was fun and I have to mention how impressed with Emma I was. At the beginning of this year, she didn’t like walking that much, but now she is comfortable walking and so much more confident with her body. She has grown a lot and develop a lot of confidence: this is awesome to see.
The kids built little dam on the river with rocks. When we arrived at the waterfall, they climb on rocks to get higher and jumped from one to the other (especially Andrew), giving me heart attack! It was fun. We walked back, jumped into the car and drove back home after a great day
On Saturday the 23rd of August, we went to see our second Highland games, the Glenurquart Highland games in Drumnadrochit. I choose the see this one as it had other events that we didn’t see in the Stirling games. There was bagpiping competition. People of different age, come in the traditional dress and play bagpipe in front of a judge. I have no idea how they decide who win, because honestly, they all sounded great! We got our fill of bagpipes! I love the sound of it.
Another event, I wanted to see was the woman heavy weight, as it didn’t have any at the last game we saw. What I didn’t know was that it was the first World Female Heavy Events Championship! What a day to be there. There were 8 female competitors and they were all amazing. They did all the events: shot put, weight for distance, hammer throw, weight over bar and the caber toss.
One of the competitors was a 16-year-old, called Juliet Ramsay, who won the shot put, the weight for distance, the hammer and the overall, making her the first world champion of Heavy weight event. She also broke the record for weight distance throw as being the first woman to throw over 100 feet (over 30 meters). This was unofficial as there was no athletic official there.
It was great to see strong women being celebrated. It was a great day.
After one last look at the Loch Ness, we drove back to our place, pack up as the next day, was moving day again. We are going near Edinburgh, which will be our last stop in Scotland! I’m not sure I’m happy about that! I love Scotland.
See you then!
MelRead more