June 22, 2018

June 22, 2018

Aimee and I both had traditional Scottish breakfasts today. I had scrambled eggs with smoked salmon and Aimee had Porridge with brown sugar and a shot of whiskey.

Braveheart is one of my favorite movies. It is about the Scottish rebellion led by William Wallace. Edinburgh sits on the Firth (mouth) of Forth (river). To explore the Wallace myth, we drove northwest along the Forth to Stirling stopping at the Castle situated like Edinburgh on a steep crag. We took a guided tour of the extensive castle but neither of us was too excited. It has been extensively modified since Medieval times and was used as army barracks until 1964. We had a hard time leaving because of the stream of cars and buses coming to park on the small summit.

At the bottom of the hill we stopped at Old Stirling Bridge. Stirling was always an important prize during the Scottish-English Wars. Its lies in the center of Scotland and has the first easy crossing of the Forth River. Here in 1297 Wallace defeated Edward 1’s army. England and Scotland would go on trading battle successes, until a Scot king with English blood became sovereign of both kingdoms uniting the two, at least informally. A Memorial to Wallace sits on another crag opposite Stirling Castle .

Stirling is on the edge of the Scottish Highlands that lay to our West. They look inviting so we take the plunge and drive for a couple hours west through Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park, bouncing from one mountain-ringed Loch to the next. Beautiful Scenery. We stop for a roadside Cappuccino at the top of one pass called ‘Rest and Be Thankful’ with a stunning vista.

We finished our drive on the west coast of Scotland where we got a room in a B&B in the little seaside town of Oban. Our penthouse room has a great view of the harbor. We eat dinner at a waterfront seafood restaurant called Ee-Usk, which I discover is Scots Gaelic for ‘fish’. The Highlands is the last holdout of Catholicism and the Gaelic language compared to the mostly English Presbyterianism of Lowland Scotland.