Castles and Cathedrals

On Saturday, after John’s rugby training, we all met in town and went out for lunch. This time, we tried one of the sister restaurants to the Glass House, called the Grill House. This one was supposed to be a bit more relaxed and good for kids. The food was supposed to be “Tex-Mex,” but in Scotland, that translates to haggis flautas, which just doesn’t seem to work. The kids ordered fusilli pasta and I went with a chicken burger. David surprised me by ordering the sweet potato and courgette curry, which was the healthiest thing on the menu by far. He offered to share with me, but I protested because of a strong dislike of zucchini, to which he said, “Oh, darn, that’s what they mean by courgette? I thought I was getting something meaty and fried!” To this, he added, “You know, I have been eating with abandon these last few days but haven’t gained an ounce.” I informed him that one should never, never utter that phrase around a woman. He merely shrugged.

Our lunch took an inordinate amount of time to arrive, so I spent a good deal of time at the table voting on Emma’s best drawing (out of 25+), digging through my purse for any wayward dusty pieces of gum I could find to distract John, and listening to David’s discussion of how, exactly, our waitress resembled a young Lucille Ball…but with pink hair. Finally, finally, our meals arrived (how does it take 50 minutes to prepare two plates of pasta in butter?), we ate, and headed out,vowing to cross that restaurant off our list! We then walked through town to the St. Andrews Cathedral, which stands between the town and the sea. Though it’s in ruins, one can still get a sense of how colossal it must have been-- the signs pointed out that it was once Scotland’s largest and most magnificent church, and featured drawings of what it looked like. While I walked through the ruins and read the signs, Emma and John played hide-and-seek among the tombstones. No one seemed to mind, however, so we let them proceed, and encouraged Emma to draw out her turn as long as possible since it was the only part of the afternoon in which John was quiet and still! We also climbed St. Rule’s Tower, which is part of an earlier cathedral building, and definitely not for the claustrophobic or faint of heart! To get in, one must pass through a revolving steel grate that’s no wider than my shoulders and resembles a round cattle chute. The chute leads to the stairs, which are even narrower and go straight up in an incredibly tiny spiral. I had to turn my purse sideways to keep it from scraping both sides of the walls at the same time. And since this was the way down from the tower as well, we had to scoot up quickly since we realized if we met another party coming down, one of us was going to have to turn around, which would be absolutely impossible. After a quick and breathless climb, we made it to the top, where we could see the entire town laid out below us on one side and the ocean on the other. It was quite stunning, and we took several great photos!

We headed back down the tower (a trip of which I thankfully have no memory—I just remember chanting “happy thoughts…happy thoughts” throughout) and walked outside the cathedral to one of the sea walls. This wall extends way out into the ocean and is about 30 feet above the water in spots, and though it affords spectacular views, it’s also incredibly dangerous. Like many other things in Scotland (which is not such a litigious society as the U.S., I assume...) there are no safety precautions on things like sea walls or rickety, medieval towers. David and the kids didn’t mind at all, and charged right out to the edge (John, in his ill-fitting rain boots, SKIPPED all the way!) while I turned my back and focused on not throwing up. To my surprise, all three made it back after a few minutes, flipping through the photographic evidence of the view on the digital camera (in which I noticed, at last, a guard rail at the very, very end of the wall!).

We then walked along the coastal path to the St. Andrews Castle, which is also in ruins, that was at one time the residence of the bishops and archbishops of St. Andrews and (like all castles in Scotland) the scene of a grisly, tortuous murder—this one of Cardinal Beaton. Since Emma is especially sensitive to stories like this, we have to make sure to brush over these as quickly as possible. To distract her from the signposts that recounted the beheading in great detail, I took the kids over to the galleys, where a plaque pointed out the various chutes that were used for the disposal of slop. This proved quite inspiring to John, and he spent the next few minutes running throughout the castle in search of other holes in the wall, calling out “Do you think they pooped HERE?...or maybe HERE?” Luckily, we were the only visitors left in the castle at the time, so we let him proceed. While I admired the height of the walls built along the beach and contemplated how they must have been able to build such an impressive castle with no modern machinery, John and David went in search of more evidence of medieval murder and mayhem. They found the mine, which was dug under the castle by an invading army in the 16^th century in the hopes of getting under the whole thing and blowing it up, and the counter-mine dug by the castle inhabitants to thwart the attack. Both the mine and the counter-mine have been left untouched, and of course one can crawl all the way through them—after passing a posted warning that says, “Enter here and you’re pretty much on your own…” I took one look down the tunnel, which made the tower stairs from the cathedral look positively cavernous, and announced that NO ONE was going down there. David and John did, of course, and John came out fifteen minutes later proclaiming that it was SO COOL, while David assured me that “the first part was really the worst. It got much less narrow after that…” Sure. After all, mines have a way of working like that.

At this point, the sun was going down (it WAS almost 4pm) so we walked back into town to retrieve our car. We did wisely make a detour to Fisher and Donaldson bakery on Church Street in search of a millionaire (a concoction of shortbread, caramel and chocolate highly recommended by my friend, world traveler and dessert connoisseur Monika Burczyk). We did find one, and three other desserts that were calling out to us as well. The bakery wrapped them all up for us and we took them home! And I can report that the millionaire is indeed to die-for, and makes for an easy way to replace all the calories burned from a quick climb up St. Rule’s Tower!

Mine's the one covered in chocolate, of course; Emma had the heart, of course; John got the frog, but just to be able to dissect it, of course; and David's is the biggest one...of course!