After a good night's rest, we got up Tuesday morning and headed back down a little ways south to Stirling so that we could visit the places we didn't quite make it to the day before. The three places we wanted to visit - Stirling Castle, the National Wallace Monument, and Doune Castle - were all quite close to one another, so we figured we could get them done earlier in the day and still have plenty of time to drive to Inverness in the Highlands. We had originally planned to drive up through the Cairngorms National Park (the 2 hour and 45 minute route), but the beauty of having your own car is that you can change your mind and path when you choose. So instead, we decided we would drive up the through the lochs and mountains (the 3 hour and 51 minute route) since the sun wasn't setting til almost 10pm, which would give us plenty of time to stop and enjoy the scenery too.
A model of Stirling Castle
Our first stop for the day (other than McDonald's for breakfast) was Stirling Castle, a fortified stronghold since ancient times that became a royal residence for the Stewarts and later adapted into a garrisoned fortress. Like Edinburgh Castle, Stirling Castle is built upon the crag of an extinct volcano giving it excellent views of and defenses from the surrounding area. It flourished under the Stewarts - James IV, James V, Mary Queen of Scots, and James VI , who all added structures as befit their needs as a place for royalty to reside. A lot of restoration and research has gone into the castle, especially in the palace area, and many of the ceiling and wall paintings and tapestries have been expertly recreated. Of special note at the castle are the Stirling Heads and the Unicorn Tapestries. The Stirling Heads found on the ceiling of the King's Inner Hall and were commissioned by James V as a way to advertise carefully selected messages about his princely virtues. Around 1777, the ceiling collapsed and the heads had to be dismantled and were scattered, but not before being cataloged by the wife of the deputy governor of the castle. Many of been collected and returned to the castle. A recreation of the Unicorn Tapestries can be found in the Queen's Inner Hall. The originals are currently housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The set of seven tapestries tell the story of a unicorn hunt so that the hunters may obtain its magical horn. The tapestries are not only meant to be decorative. They can also be seen as an allegorical representation of the passion and resurrection of Christ or a more direct allegory of courtly love. Whatever interpretation you choose to believe, they're gorgeous and enhance the opulence of the room.
Stirling Castle
Can you see the spiral
staircase on the left?
After a quick trip into the actual town of Stirling to exchange some money, we headed out to the National Wallace Monument that sits atop the summit of Abbey Craig. The monument was built in the 19th century to honor the 13th-century Scottish hero, William Wallace. You may remember a small American movie made about him, Braveheart, starring Mel Gibson. ::wink, wink:: Anyways, the Wallace Monument is a 220 foot sandstone Victorian Gothic tower, and you can climb the 246 spiral stairs all the way to the crown at the top for amazing views. Along the climb, there are 3 different rooms in which to stop and view exhibits about William Wallace and other Scots of note. Also on display is Wallace's long sword, which measures 1.67 meters in length, or 5 ft, 5.75 inches. I was determined that I was going to make it to the top of this thing even though it required going up and up so many spiral steps. The stairway up really wasn't meant for two people on it at a time either, so if someone was going down as you were climbing up, you had to squeeze to the side to be able to give way. The three different display rooms on the way up provided good stopping points on our climb and told the story of William Wallace and the history of the monument itself. The good thing about climbing up though was that the higher we climbed, the cooler it was, and we got a good breeze coming in the tiny slits of windows built into the staircase. When we got to the top underneath the crown of the monument, the views were spectacular but so was the wind! It was so windy that it could blow your feet out from under you if you weren't careful. I'm not going to lie, I felt pretty accomplished making it all the way up there until I realized we had to take those tiny spiraling steps all the way back down again.
Doune Castle
A quick car ride later, we made it to Doune Castle, a must visit for fans of the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail or the TV show Outlander. Now, Kevin and I had had hit-or-miss experiences from the audio guides up to this point, but we knew we had to get this one because it was narrated by Terry Jones of Monty Python fame, and it was HILARIOUS. Doune Castle was used in Monty Python for the encounter between King Arthur and his knights with the French knights, as well as the Black Swamp prince/wedding scenes, the Knights of the Round table song and dance, and Castle Anthrax. More recently, Doune Castle has acted as the stand-in for Castle Leoch on Outlander, and can I say, Outlander has done a lot for Scottish tourism of late. Diana Gabaldon's book has been in every gift shop, and you can even book Outlander filming based tours of the country. Unlike the other castles we had visited up to this point, Doune Castle was partially in ruin. Doune Castle was built around the 1380s by Robert II, Robert the Bruce's grandson. In 1420s, it became a Royal Castle used as a hunting lodge under James I after he beheaded the castle's previous owner, the 2nd Duke of Albany. By 1800, Doune Castle was a roofless ruin until repair works began in the 1880s and was later donated to Historic Scotland for maintenance. It opened to the public in 1984. Today, you can see and tour most of the larger rooms like the Great Hall, the kitchens, and some of the upstairs bedchambers.
By the time we finished all of our scheduled sightseeing for the day, it was well into the afternoon, and we still had to make our way up to Inverness. As much as the drives are beautiful to experience, there isn't a straight road in sight since much of the roadway is cut in and around the lochs and mountains. We drove up and down in elevation, around curve after curve, and in sunshine, clouds, and rain. The main road up to Inverness is only two lanes, so we were always on alert for cars trying to pass. At the beginning of our trek, we were still in the Queen Elizabeth Forest Park, so there were lots of chances to pull over and snap great views of the lochs. As we drove farther on into the mountains, you could see the peaks still had snow on them and a lot of them were covered in misty clouds. By the time we made it out of the park, we started to notice that the road signs were being written in both English and Gaelic. It seemed like most of the time the Gaelic version of the name was so much longer than the English one. By the time, we made it into Inverness for the night, it was 8:30pm (and still light out). We were able to grab some dinner in the hotel's restaurant and nicely settle into our suite to which we had been surprisingly upgraded upon our arrival. If you watch the video below, you'll get a little sense of the twisting and turning roads we traveled. Also, there's a link to the rest of our pictures from the day! Even though we were seemingly in the car for most of the day, we still managed to log 9,937 steps, or just over 4 miles.
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