Scotland - Highlands, Perth, Stirling Castle, Linlithgow Palace

Since we were staying in the UK over the Christmas / New Year's holiday, we decided to spend a few days in Scotland. We'd heard that Edinburgh has a really nice New Year's celebration called Hogmanay so we decided to check it out and see a bit more of Scotland. We drove up on the 28th of December and stayed through the 1st.


Here's a rough shot at our travel itinerary.


The 28th was a driving day. We decided rather than just drive to Edinburgh, we'd drive towards Inverness in the Scottish Highlands and see some nice scenery.  The drive to Inverness was supposed to be around 7 hours, but unfortunately the weather was quite poor.  It rained pretty much the entire way up and the winds were so severe that part of the drive through Scotland was at a reduced speed limit (70 down to 50mph). Even though the weather was crappy, the scenery was pretty. Here are some pics. We made it nearly up to Newtonmore before we turned around and headed back to Perth.

Scottish Lowlands

Scottish Lowlands - Sheep on the hillside - They were everywhere

Scottish Lowlands - We saw quite a few rainbows on the way since it seemed to rain, stop, then rain some more the entire drive.

Scottish Highlands - The weather got worse the further north we got. We saw several snow spotted peaks. Not sure what we missed due to the rain/fog.

The next morning we headed to see something very Scottish, a Single Malt Scotch Whisky distillery.  I'll admit I don't really like Whisky, but when in Scotland, do as the Scots do.  We saw a relatively average sized distillery near Blackford called Tullibardine. We were fortunate enough to get a tour from a nice Scottish man named Jim who taught us many things we didn't know about single malt Scotch whisky. {Thanks to Steve Frey for clearing up my confusion with the difference between whisky and whiskey}.

Stills used to take the alcohol from 7% to 23%.

Empty barrels, many of which I was surprised to find come from American bourbon distilleries because Bourbon distilleries can only use new wood barrels. They sell their leftover barrels to other spirit producers like Tullibardine. 

Tullibardine Whisky barrels (the oldest Scotch was aged nearly 60 years)

Now, after visiting the distillery we headed to Edinburgh and spent the next several days between there and a few other notable sights.  Rather than jump around I'll just hit Edinburgh at the end and mention the others first.


Of all the places we could see, we decided to see Stirling Castle and Linlithgow Palace. Both sites are rich in Scottish history and quite impressive.


Here's a bit more (hopefully accurate) history on each:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linlithgow_Palace


We hit Linlithgow Palace first.  Linlithgow Palace is located in the village of Linlithgow, 20 miles west of Edinburgh. The palace is now in ruins, but was used as a royal residence and meeting hall from the 1420s to 1746. In 1746 a fire spread throughout the castle and it was never rebuilt, quite a shame to be honest because this place must have been impressive in it's day.  The palace itself is a square structure with 6 floors (1 basement level) with a center atrium with an impressive fountain added by James V.  The rooms were very large compared to other palaces and castles we have seen (aside from Windsor Castle) and the most impressive was the Great Hall. You can see a picture of me in the hall just to get an idea of the size.


http://www.aboutscotland.com/linlith/two.html

Linlithgow Palace (unfortunately, not my pic)

Linlithgow Palace Atrium

Linlithgow Palace Great Hall - It's HUGE 

Linlithgow Palace - Great Hall

Linlithgow Palace Atrium

One of the things I've really enjoyed while being in the UK is seeing so many castles.  Since we'd seen so many already, why not go see another? When discussing places to visit in Scotland, Scottish coworkers and friends here kept mentioning Stirling Castle as a place to visit so we went to check it out. 

Rather than bore you with castle details, here's the wikipedia page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_Castle

The castle is built on a hill aptly named Castle Hill and has been officially recognized as a castle since the early 12th century. Again, like all other castles and palaces, it has been heavily added on and modified over the years. My impression of the castle compared to others I have seen is that it wasn't really all that impressive compared to say Windsor or Neuschwanstein. What is really interesting about Stirling Castle is a small part of its military history.  While in Scotland we did discover that the movie Braveheart is complete crap, with almost all of the movie being false. That being said, one of only a few realities in the movie is that William Wallace was a real person and did defeat a rather sizeable force of British soldiers at Stirling.  If you look at a few of the pictures below you'll see the Wallace Monument on the distant hill. This is where William Wallace and a small force of Scottish volunteers launched a surprise attack on a British force of over 5000 troops crossing the river Forth below.  Pretty impressive.

Of the other things we saw in the castle, there were several oaken carvings that were conscripted by James V as a symbol of his power and right to rule as King.  These carvings are known as the Stirling Heads and are some of the finest examples of Renaissance Scottish wood carving in existence. There were originally over 50 of these figures and they hung from a single ceiling in one of the palace rooms.  The weight of the heads was too much and the ceiling later collapsed. 38 still exist and were displayed in the castle. I've included pictures of a few. 

View from Stirling Castle - That's Wallace Monument on the hill, marking the spot where Wallace's troop hid before attacking (and beating) the English crossing the river Forth at the Battle of Stirling.

Zoomed view of Wallace Monument

View from the other side of the castle - Gardens below and King's Park (now a golf course)

Stirling Castle Palace

Stirling Heads - Commissioned by King James V as a symbol of his wealth and right to be the Scottish King.

Stirling Castle Great Hall - The roof was built by shipmakers, which apparently was common back then as this was true of several other medieval castle / palace roofs we have seen while in Europe. This is likely how the Great Hall's roof in Linlithgow Palace (earlier pictures) would have looked.

That concludes our non-Edinburgh part of the trip.


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