Craigievar and Crathes Castles

Our castle tour through the Royal Deeside area continued this week, and we visited Craigievar and Crathes on a beautifully sunny day. Craigievar is a gorgeous, seven storey tower castle, harled in pink to match the granite that was used throughout in the castle construction. As a result, it looks like something from a Disney princess tale. Construction on the castle was completed in 1626, and it was owned and occupied by the Forbes family continuously until 1963. They didn't do much at all to improve the place in all those years, meaning the original footprint is still intact, and there's no Victorian wing or addition as is the case with most of the other castles we have seen so far. Apparently, their notions of historic preservation were so great that they never even added electricity, and even in 1963 were living in the castle by candlelight. Inside, the castle features some beautiful plaster ceilings...in fact they were the exact same ceilings we had seen in a few other castles on the tour. Apparently, an Italian plaster craftsman made his way through this part of Scotland in 1624, offering lairds and landowners a kind of 2-fer-1 special on moulded ceilings featuring Italian kings and queens. More interestingly, the castle features some amazing woodwork, as William Forbes made his fortune importing pine into Scotland from the Baltic states. He had craftsmen add pine detailing to many of the rooms, and our tour guide explained that, in order to make the pine look richer and more expensive--more like mahogany--it was stained with fresh ox blood. She assured us that the oxblood has been varnished many times over the years, but it did still contribute to the dark color of the wood.

I found many of the wood details of the castle fascinating--upstairs in the servants quarters the rooms featured box beds built into the paneling in an ingenious way. The wood was quite dark in the lower floor rooms, as that was where the family received guests and dignitaries, and became lighter as one ascended the curved granite stairs. In the upper floors, there were several nursery rooms and drawing rooms meant for sewing or reading, so they were done in light woods and white walls, and box cushions made from clan tartan on the built-in seats in each of the castle turrets. The castle footprint was quite small--no open floor plan here-- so it was quite a climb from the bottom floors to the top. I certainly felt sorry for the maids who had to carry buckets of water from the well in the basement to the top floors for the family's baths. At the very top, there was a bit of roof access, so the owners could survey all of their land. There weren't formal gardens here, as the owners had taken advantage of the hilltop location of the castle and cleared the land to create sweeping vistas below. Despite that, the castle was simply gorgeous...probably one of the most beautiful I have seen here in Scotland.

We also visited Crathes Castle, which is about 30 minutes to the east of Craigievar. Crathes is another harled 16th century tower house, owned by the Burnett of Leys family from the time the land was given to them in 1323 by King Robert the Bruce. Unlike Craigiever, Crathes was improved through the centuries, so wings were added, expanded, and reconstructed after fires. A main feature of this castle are the many Scottish renaissance painted ceilings in the Jacobean rooms in the castle.

There was no formal tour of this castle, but NTS staff were on hand in many of the rooms to answer questions. In one bedroom, we encountered a young woman who was working for the National Trust with long dark hair and an American accent. She told us about the furniture in the room, and Emma asked some questions about the woodwork on the beds. We weren't going through this castle with Amy and Ted, since I had stupidly lost track of them at the entrance, but after we debriefed later, Ted said he had talked to her as well and learned she was actually Canadian. Emma added that having a conversation with her was like talking to a future version of herself!

Crathes is surrounded by formal gardens, and these were just stunning. A walled garden featured climbing roses trailed on ropes, and though they weren't in bloom, the structure they gave to the garden was lovely. The tulips were in bloom, as were the bleeding heart, and there was one perennial border set aside for plants with white blossoms, but featuring foliage of all textures and colors. Had I had time, I would have written down every single plant and tried to recreate the bed in its entirety somewhere in my garden in the U.S. Unfortunately, the gardens closed at five here as well, so a few photos will have to do!

The white blossom border

Like my hat?

Roses training on a rope

Bleeding heart in bloom

The garden as seen through the main gate

Tulips in bloom

Dunnotar and Drum Castles

Emma and I have been visiting some of Scotland's finest castles with my sister Amy and her husband Ted this week. We started at one of our favorites...Dunnotar. We have been here twice already this year, but this castle is so unique and so well-sited that one could easily visit it repeatedly and never tire of it. It's a bit of a hike to the castle from the car park, but the views along the way are well worth the 180 (Ted counted them!) steep steps. This castle is in ruins, but enough of it remains to give visitors a fine picture of how it might have looked through the centuries.

While at Dunnotar, we also stopped at Drum Castle. This castle, unlike most of the ruins we visit which are managed by Historic Scotland, is a National Trust property. This means it has been donated to the historic preservation organization, and is often fully intact and furnished to one or more of the periods of the former occupants. In the case of Drum, the family that was given the castle by Robert the Bruce in 1323 passed it along to the NTS in 1975, after living in it continuously for over 600 years.

Tours of such properties often include a good bit of information about the family that lived in the castle, and to me this is only moderately interesting. I prefer to hear about the way the castle was used and altered through the years as people's habits and living preferences changed, no matter what their name was or how closely they were related to the queen. For example, at Drum, a visit begins in the Jacobean addition to the original tower and focuses on the collection of family portraits. We breezed through this, though I did notice that the late Laird of Drum bears a striking resemblance to Woodrow Wilson. From there, we passed through some additional sections that were added during the Victorian era, and ended in the medieval tower house, where the High Hall is still intact.

Drum also has a wonderful walled garden, which features a wonderful collection of historic roses. These weren't in bloom, of course, so we didn't get to enjoy them. Overall the garden was divided into four sections: one for the 17th century, one for the 18th, the 19th and 20th. This was quite an interesting way to display the historic collection, and we spent a good bit of time exploring each.

I preferred the 17th century section, which is a knot garden and features a medieval potager, which is a kind of a French kitchen garden and mixes fruit and vegetable crops with ornamental and medicinal herbs. I took literally hundreds of photos for my own garden idea album, but will spare you the information overload here. This section also included a series of very interesting woven willow structures, like the arch above.

Emma preferred the 18th century parterre garden, which was quite formal and featured tightly clipped hedges and mowed pathways, along with an impressive collection of perennials and gallica roses (or at least that's what the sign said they were!). One of our favorite features here was a sundial embedded into the flagstone patio. One steps on the center mosiac on the correct month, as Emma is doing above, and then one's shadow will point to the correct time. It's hard to tell from here, but Emma's shadow is just a hair off of the number "5", which meant that the garden was just about to close!

Me, Amy and Emma at the end of a day of castle touring!

Impossibly Beautiful Iona

As a family, very little compares for us to the beauty of a visit to the Isle of Iona. Our first visit, in June of 2011, was about as close to perfect as a weekend getaway could be. While we were there, we agreed that we needed to get the Colgate students there, as it was such a special place, so for this trip we set aside time and budget to make it happen. On Thursday, we set off with our students for a day of travel to get there. It requires a bus trip across the country (and for this we hired a chartered bus to avoid the multiple changes that public transportation requires) to the lovely port city of Oban. From there, we boarded a large Caledonian MacBrayne ferry for an hour-long ride across the sound of Mull to the Isle of Mull. In the port city of Craignure, we boarded another bus for the hour long scenic drive across Mull, and ended up in the even smaller port city of Fionnphort. There, we boarded yet another ferry for the ten minute ride to Iona. We were on the island at last, but still had a 20 minute walk to the very end of the island, where our hostel was located. The hostel was an ecofriendly little bunk house in a shatteringly beautiful spot behind a farmhouse, and between two sandy beaches that looked like they were straight out of the Caribbean. Our travels overall were relatively uneventful, though Leah did take a spill on the road up to the hostel and ended up with a bruise and a bit of blood streaming down her forehead. She was so exhausted from the travel, though, that she still managed to fall asleep on my shoulder as I carried her up the road. When we arrived, she rallied, and so after a quick dinner prepared in the hostel kitchen, we headed out to the beach. It was 9:00 pm at that point, but the sun was still up and so the kids got in some good beach time while we talked with the students and watched the sunset over the rocks.

The students spent most of the two days alternating between studying in the hostel and exploring the island. We got in some good hikes and hill walks, a visit to the Abbey, a quick turn on the 18 hole golf course, and more beach time. Friday was lovely and sunny, but Saturday brought some rain, though both days were equally enjoyable nonetheless. We had a lovely dinner out with the students on Friday night at one of the island's two upscale hotels, and the meal featured lots of local seafood and vegetables from the hotel's enormous garden outside the windows. On Saturday, we had dinner at the only pub on the island, and it was equally good (I might have eaten an entire kilo of mussels on my own...). We left on Sunday morning for the long journey home, and though it's always sad to leave such a special place, I'm glad that we had the chance to share it with the students this time.

It's hard to describe how lovely Iona is, so I will let my photos do the talking instead!

The Abbey at Iona

Leah was quite taken with the audio guide at the Abbey.

Each column in the Abbey Cloister features a wildflower that grows in the British Isles.

John and Emma on top of Dun I, Iona's tallest "hill"

Emma and Leah on the beach.

David and Leah on the beach.

John climbing some of the beach rocks.

Leah on the "wild" golf course

Leah discovers barnacles!

Me and Leah taking a tripod-selfie while the boys climb the rocks.

Two of our new lamb friends.

The students on the Iona pier.

Rugby and Cream Tea

It's a rainy Monday morning here, and a bank holiday (for May Day) so everyone is home from school. We had planned a short road trip to a safari park about 90 minutes away, but since everyone is sleeping in and it looks a bit soggy outside, I think it's more likely that we will stay put for the day. We had a lovely weekend, and at last John has made a friend, Josh, who lives very close to us on the Lade Braes who is as keen as John is to spend the whole day riding bikes and taking scooters to the local skate park. John and Josh spent the whole afternoon together on Friday after school, and ended up at the basketball court at the end of the Lade Braes with a small team of lads from Madras until well after sunset. At one point, Josh's mum showed up at our door, looking a bit concerned that she hadn't heard from her son. It seems this was the first time he had stayed out past dark without checking in. I apologized for the situation, since it's likely not a coincidence that the first time he does something rather irresponsible is also the first time he does something with John! She said she wasn't terribly concerned, as long as we knew where they were, and mostly she had just been concerned that Josh went off telling her only that he was going to hang out with "some American boy named John who lives in a rather thin house on the Lade Braes." I'm quite surprised that she was actually able to track us down from that small bit of information...apparently our neighbors are paying more attention to us than I assumed they were! In any case, she asked us to check in on the boys, and so we sent David off after them with the car. As she left, she said, "I really don't mind, you know...it's just...is your son a rather sensible boy? Because my son is the sort who is easily led." I assured her that John was quite sensible and there was no cause for concern. Still, when David found them, he reported that Josh asked more than once, "So, me mum came round because she was concerned, is it? Not because she was cross? Just concerned?"

John's rugby team had a tournament planned for Saturday, and it was a "sevens" tournament, meaning they have a small subset of the team play, and they sort the teams AYSO-style (U14, U15, U18, etc.) rather than by school year. Not all the boys play, as only some are selected for the smaller teams, and they tend to be the quick ones. I thought John hadn't been selected, as I'm still not fully able to understand his coaches when they talk about upcoming fixtures. But, one of them emailed me on Friday night to ask if John was able to play. So, on Saturday morning, Leah and I packed up her pushchair and went down to the pitch, armed with lots of nappies and some money for the tuck shop at the clubhouse. David and Emma stayed home as they both had to catch up on work and studying (Emma has a Nationals exam on Wednesday for which she needs to prepare, as it is covering the year's worth of material and she has only been in the class for four months!) The tournament was an all-day affair, and so by the time we left in the late afternoon, Leah had consumed two bacon rolls, a cup of spicy sweet potato coconut soup, a bag of crisps, a doughnut and a scone from the clubhouse. John's team made it all the way to the final game, which they won, (though he wasn't playing at that point) so it was 4:00 pm by the time we left the tournament.

Rugby Tournament in St. Andrews (note the snow on the hills in the background!)

On the way home, we stopped at the playground down the lane, and Leah quickly made a new friend, a girl with dark curly hair named Darcy. They were both on a long metal slide at the same time, and since Leah was wearing a full-body snowsuit, she was really rocketing down the slide. Darcy's clothing was creating a bit more "drag" so after a few minutes, Leah managed to catch up with her and they started to slide down together. After a bit, they moved on to new sections of the park, and David and I followed, along with Darcy's dad, a young guy with dark, curly hair. We started by smiling meekly at each other, as parents do at the playground, but after a bit it was clear that the girls intended to travel as a team and so we started to talk with him a bit. I'm never one to chat up parents at a playground, so it wasn't a full blown conversation by any means...more along the lines of a, "Well, they will sleep well tonight, won't they?" conversation. We did manage to coordinate the messages of "one more time down the slide, darling" so we ended up leaving the playground at the same time. Leah and Darcy walked away hand in hand, and I'm still gutted that I didn't have a camera with which to take a picture! But, Darcy wasn't too pleased when they reached their car and it was clear that we were going to continue on foot. She pitched a bit of a fit and insisted that she was going home with us, and that ended in Darcy's dad chasing Darcy down the path a bit. At that point, I'm sure he was glad that I didn't have a camera with me after all.

On Sunday after church, Leah and Emma and I decided to visit Falkland Palace, which is about 30 minutes up the road from St. Andrews. It's a royal palace, and one of the few Renaissance palaces in Scotland, and it has a long history that involves (naturally) imprisonment, murder and Mary Queen of Scots. Only a portion of the palace is standing as fire damaged much of it shortly after the Union of the Crowns in 1606. As a result, it's more well known for its gardens, and for its tennis court, which is the world's oldest tennis court still in use. Because it was a weekend, the rooms were staffed by National Trust volunteers who pointed out various items of interest in each room and answered questions. Leah was given a kid's trail that highlighted various images and items of children to be found in each room, and that kept her relatively well-occupied as we toured the rooms. As we exited the house and passed through the gift shop, the staff there gave her a small chocolate Easter bunny, left over from the Easter trail held at the Palace a few weeks before. This left quite an impression on her, and she happily munched on the bunny's ears as we walked through the gardens. After a tour of the lily pond, the glasshouses, the aforementioned tennis court and a living labyrinth made of willow trees, we left the palace and walked through the charming village of Falkland. We ended up at a tea room which was off to the side of a small craft shop. It was a bit precious, so it was probably good that the boys weren't there as it wouldn't have been their "cup of tea" so to speak. But for the three of us, it was lovely, and we ordered a cream tea for the three of us to share. They brought out tea in small pots covered with knitted cozies, and a hot chocolate for Leah, along with a two-tier stand of tarts, traybakes, meringues and scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam. The three of us had a lovely meal, though Emma and I left the table in a bit of a sugary-sleepy daze while Leah was positively bouncing off the stone walls of the shop as we paid our bill!