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Castles

In Yorkshire we visited the faux battlements at Ravenscar, overlooking Robin hood Bay.

We visited Lincoln castle where there is a copy of the Magna Carta -- it's under thick glass, in a room with lighting so dim you can hardly see if anything is there at all! But I guess it looked pretty good for an 800 year old document written in shorthand.

Not much is left of York castle, but Clifford's Tower is an impressive keep on a tall mound overlooking the river.

In Warwick we visited Warwick Castle: they were trying very hard to keep the tourists interested, with strolling minstrels, and the day we visited there was a joust with several knights in armor and some great trick riding. At Edinburgh we saw Edinburgh Castle with its historic sites overlooking the city. At Stirling we saw Stirling Castle and visited the battlefields at Bannockburn and Stirling Bridge, site of the William Wallace monument. At Inverness we skipped past the castle and visited Culloden battlefield instead.

We took a bus to Edzell to see some neolithic ruins but they were too far to walk, so instead we visited Edzell castle which turned out to be quite interesting. It was a "tower house" and the early owners were quite well educated and cultured people in the early 1600s. The lord built a lovely garden area enclosed with a wall decorated with many carvings of classical allegorical figures,

Then we took a cruise on Loch Ness (no Nessie!) and saw the famous Castle Urqhart on the point overlooking the lake. Although the lake is roughly the size of Lake Winnepesaukee in New Hampshire, it is much deeper, so who knows what might be hidden in its depths? On the other hand, there were fishermen, cruisers and sailboats aplenty all around, so any monster that stays hidden on that lake has some great camouflage!

So much for Castles!

pages from a notebook 1997 Matt McConeghy