Castle Campbell

Since the upcoming week is a short one for the kids, we decided to stick close to home for the weekend and save our bigger travels for the end of next week. On Saturday, we ventured about 45 minutes away to Castle Campbell, a 14^th century fortress high up in the mountains above Stirling. It was an imposing structure, and about half of it was in ruins while the other half

(mostly the tower) was still intact, though empty…a great place for the kids to spend a few hours running around. The whole thing was perched precariously in between two huge hills, and there were some great hiking trails around the bottom. It is snowdrop and aconite season here, so after a quick tour of the castle, we hiked along a waterfall and across a few suspension footbridges at the foot of the castle to check out the flowers. It was a bit muddy, but since John’s enjoyment level increases as the muck on his boots gets higher and higher, he was having a ball. Though it does get cold here, Scotland’s climate is a temperate one, so the crevices and rocks and forest floor were covered in moss and lichen, and all kinds of tropical-type plants. It was really beautiful, and none of us were in a hurry to leave.

To get to the castle, we had to go through some incredibly narrow roads (and in some spots, the use of the word “road” is pretty generous.) A few weeks ago, we bought an in-car GPS unit, and we were all laughing hysterically as the voice on the GPS repeatedly told us to turn into more and more precarious spots. At one point, we were driving through a sheep pasture (and all the sheep were calmly looking at us as if to say, “Poor suckers…”) on a road so narrow that the rear view mirrors were scraping the stone walls on either side. After about a quarter-mile, we came upon a huge puddle in the road. The water was black, so we had absolutely no idea how deep it was and figured it was a really bad idea to drive through. Of course, since it was a really, really bad idea to back up, we just closed our eyes and proceeded. It was quite deep in the end, but not catastrophically deep, and for the rest of the ride, the kids just kept saying, “Can we go through that puddle again?”

After our hike and castle tour, we got back in the car and drove back down the hill to Stirling. Emma’s birthday is on Wednesday, so we stopped at a shopping center to look for some gifts. She couldn’t find anything that she really “fancied,” so we hit the Thornton’s store (a big UK chocolate company) and left. We kept going into Stirling and drove past the William Wallace monument, which was lit from inside and quite stunning with the sunset as a backdrop. In the village, we stopped for dinner at an Indian restaurant. David and Emma had the buffet, which was puzzlingly still served in two courses…the starter buffet and the main buffet. John and I ordered off the menu, and about four waiters kept stopping by to check on us. John was looking around at the red-velvet tufted booths, and kept saying, “This is a really nice restaurant, and they sure do look after you here!” I guess we should take him out to dinner more often! Towards the end of the dinner, the waiters kept bringing out sizzling dishes of spicy food, and as they walked through the restaurant spreading spicy smoke, they created a fit of coughing and gagging among the other diners. It was like watching a wave go through a baseball stadium, and the four of us were really giggling, in between our own hacking fits!

Sunday was quite rainy, and since our church doesn’t start until noon, we decided to go for a morning hike. There’s a county park about a mile and a half up the road from our house that has a pond with boat rentals, an island, a small train and a playground. It doesn’t open until April 1 so the gates are locked, but there’s a walking trail from our house that goes right there, so I wanted to see if we could get in before it officially opens. I told everyone to dress appropriately, and stated clearly that once we left the house there would be no complaining about being cold or wet. Someone in our family didn’t wear good shoes, though, and slipped in the mud about ten minutes into the walk. We pressed on, but after thirty minutes, this person was too miserable, and wanted to turn back. So, I let him, but sent John with him back to the house as a chaperone (and to listen to him mutter the whole way back about how silly it was to go for a walk in the pouring rain!) Emma and I continued, and after crossing a golf course (it is St. Andrews after all!) we got there. The park was surrounded by barbed wire, and though the fence was broken in one spot and I let Emma squeeze through to try “the playground of her dreams!” as she called it upon first sight, we only stayed a few minutes since we were clearly breaking the rules. We made it home as well, though a bit soggier and muddier than I had intended, and just made it to church in time. In the afternoon, we went back to the leisure center for the Aqua Zone session, where the kids go through a big inflatable obstacle course on top of the pool. Emma was disappointed that Naughty Charlie was there as well, but happy when he was promptly kicked out for bad behavior (surprise!). John had met up with one of his rugby chums at church and went to the leisure center with him, so they spent the whole hour wrestling in the shallow end of the pool, while Emma raced some other kids across the obstacle course, pretending not to know who David was as he shouted in his American accent, “Goooo, Emma, gooooo! You can take that kid….gooooo!”