Thursday morning, Marc joined us for a tour of the area north and west of Edinburgh. First, we visited Doune Castle, featured in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Remember the scene where the “French” soldiers catapulted animals over the wall onto King Arthur’s coconut-clapping companion?

Marc immediately found a geocache place near the parking area, his first in Scotland. Beware of Low Flying Livestock and Trojan Rabbits is the name of the cache he found. Marc and his wife Joelle have been geocaching for years, and they are very good at it! 48 countries! Over 8,000 caches. 146 in the US.

The audio tour at Doune was hilarious! Sound effects from the Monty Python adventures, with the voices of some of actors doing the narrative.

Outlander scenes were filmed in this castle, decades after Monty Python. The audio tour featured the actor Jamie’s voice, with personal bits about his time shooting scenes there. Doune Castle was a great adventure.

Between our castle tours, we saw the Falkirk Wheel, an engineering marvel built in the 20th century that allowed canal boats to be raised or lowered without using locks.

Next, we drove tiny roads toward Midhope Castle, which was used in the Outlander Series as Jamie’s home. When we arrived, with only about ten minutes to spare, we discovered we needed tickets to wander around outside the castle. Clare took a picture from the parking lot instead, and we went on for our next planned tour.

Blackness Castle was listed as part of the “Outlander” experience. The castle itself (military site?) is very well preserved, all the rocks in place. This place featured many spiral staircases, slippery in the damp weather.

Unfortunately, no audio tour was available at Blackness Castle. I love being able to listen and look around at the same time. Signs have to be read, so your eyes are too busy to enjoy the scenery.

Wednesday morning, we visited Balmoral Castle, owned by the Royal Family since it was purchased by Queen Victoria in the early 1800s.

Her husband Albert redesigned hundreds of acres of land, planting trees like Redwood, Douglas Fir, Western Hemlock, Royal Fir and at least one other large evergreen. Now, over a century later, those trees are huge and beautiful.

Visitors are not allowed inside the castle, except to the ballroom where pictures are forbidden, but we spent hours wandering around outside through the grounds, including a short walk along the River Dee. We listened to stories about the Royals, how they would stay at the castle a few weeks every summer, holding yearly parties for their workers.

After the castle, we started toward our hotel for that night. Along the way, we visited the outside of another castle, Braemer, which had a faraway view of the Balmoral castle. Lunch in the town of Braemer followed.

Then, a lovely drive through the Cairngorms on the old military road that the British used in the 18th century to muster troops to attack the Jacobites. The countryside is subdued, almost squashed, relative to the topography we know in Colorado. Hillsides can be steep, but they are rounded due to the thick ice sheets that covered all of Northern Europe during the ice ages.

Another windy, hilly road with amazing scenery.  Our goal was the town of Falkland, featured in the first season of Outlander as a stand-in for Inverness, where we reserved the room used for a 1940s scene.  

We wandered around the town before our friend, Marc, arrived to share dinner. He’ll be with us for a few days.

First impression of the Scottish Highlands is green. Wet and green. Lots of lochs!

After a long day of travel over the Atlantic and a connection in London to Inverness, we stayed at the Inverness Airport hotel to catch up with the time change.

As soon as we saw this sign in the hotel bar, we had to have a beer! Of course, we both chose hoppyness.

Then, Monday night, we slept fitfully because we forgot to bring the Melatonin… sigh.

Tuesday we started at the Highland Folk Museum, which is an outdoor area with reconstructed buildings and artifacts from three eras in Highlands history. Learning the cultural history early in a visit is an excellent foundation on which to build one’s understanding of an area.

The above four pictures are from the oldest part represented, called Baile Gean, a 1700s Township. Nine sites exposed dark, windowless buildings with steep roofs. A period-clad woman explained that the buildings collected the smoke from the peat fires, allowing the humans to smoke their meat while they were inside the building. Seems nonintuitive now.

The mill area reminded us of a scene from the Outlander Series, when the main male character, Jamie, waited underwater for the menacing Red Coats to leave. We found many sites from this series to visit on this trip.

The Balameanach area, the middle village in the museum, featured 13 sites from about 200 years later.

The last area was Croit Allt Larigh, from just a bit later than the middle part of the park, er museum. Many artifacts and buildings were preserved from this more recent era.

Driving

Left side. Driver is always toward the center of the road. Remember. Look right before left.

We thought that would be our main stumbling block, but – 20% grade? Who are you kidding? But 20% they were, and 13% and super windy. At least we were warned by the signs.

Also, single carriage with passing places. Hm. Single lane we get, but the turnouts were too few for the traffic. We found ourselves, (well Brian, as he was driving) stomping on the brakes to avoid head-on collisions, unfruitfully seeking a passing place.

We made it to our nighttime destination, Craigendarroch Suites in Ballater, where we slept. Lovely place.

“There’s no place on Earth with more magic and more superstition mixed into its daily life than the Scottish Highlands,” says Frank to Claire in the first episode of Outlander.

Geeks Clare and Brian will travel to Scotland in June to see ancient sites on the islands, visit castles and other sites that were filming locations for the Outlander television series, sample whiskies, and view geology along the northern coast (North Coast 500).

In 2013, Brian and Clare visited the Scottish Highlands as part of a geology field trip which focussed on the important controversy concerning the identification of major thrust faults in the northwest Highlands. Read a brief summary of that trip here:

Put together this puzzle to review some of the geology.