Sunny Weekend in St. Andrews

We only have a few weeks to go in Scotland, so we were happy to have a weekend of sunny, warmish (for Scotland at least!) weather to enjoy this past weekend. We spent Saturday close to home, strolling through town, which is bursting with spring blossoms and students who have completed their exams and are saying goodbye. In our front garden, there's a lovely tree that's in full bloom right now, and it's so stunning that people stop all the time to take photos with their cell phones. A few times, people have come into our garden, walked onto the deck and taken photos. The first time this happened, I was quite startled. I had to keep reminding myself that this is not America, and it's not considered threatening to walk onto privately owned property here.

The tree from the Lade Braes walk.

The gate to our house, with the tree in full bloom right next to it.

A view of the tree from our garden...apparently, this is the money shot people are coming into our garden to take!

While I was taking these, Leah came out of the house, and wanted to have her photo taken in front of the tree. She also wanted to TAKE the photo, and was quite upset that she couldn't do both at the same time. I tried to get her to use the "selfie" setting on my camera so she could take the photo and be in it at the same time, but she was going to have none of that! After some substantial discussion and more than a few tears, she settled on having me take the photo, but she couldn't manage to turn the tears off long enough to get a good shot!

Emma and Leah and I walked into town in the afternoon, and there was a very large and elegant wedding just ending at Holy Trinity church in the center of town when we walked past. We stopped for a bit to watch the guests emerge from the church, followed by three small flower girls wrapped in so much tulle they could barely move. Every single woman that emerged from the church was wearing a fascinator, which is a frothy concoction of feathers, ribbons and flowers, pinned at a precarious angle somewhere on their head. It was like being in a living sculpture park! We then continued on, and stopped into Janetta's for some gelato. We were fortunate to get a booth, and both girls had a wee sundae while I had tea.

Emma and Leah in the booth at Janetta's

Not sure what Emma said to her, but she sure looks mad!

John had been invited to two birthday parties for some of the kids who are in his so-called "squad"...the group of boys who walk around town together at lunch time. I ferried John and his friend Josh to the first party, in a nearby town called Newport-on-Tay, then picked them up a few hours later, brought them back to St. Andrews, the ferried them to another nearby town called Strathkinness for the second party. It was a lot of driving for UK standards, but the day was so gorgeous and warm that I didn't mind a bit. At one point, after dropping them off in Strathkinness, I took a turn on a single-track road that turned into a seasonal farm road not yet open for the season, so I had to turn around (not easy to do on a single-track road, by the way! Imagine attempting a K turn on a golf cart path and you'll know what I mean!). Halfway through the turn, I realized that the scenery was so stunning that I had to lean my phone out the car window to take a photo!

On Sunday, we had another lovely walk into town, and then had an early dinner at a restaurant in town called Forgan's. Our lovely students gave us a gift card to the restaurant at the final group dinner, before some of them left St. Andrews, and so we decided to use it for a relaxing Sunday meal. We had taken the students there on our first weekend in St. Andrews, so it was a nice gesture for them to allow us to go...and this time the kids got to come along. Though it's a nice restaurant, they do a great job of catering to kids, and there's a library in the back that seems to be set aside for those dining with kids. The restaurant has a cool, farmhouse-industrial theme with a Scottish twist, so I had a hard time concentrating on my butternut squash Wellington because I was so busy making decorating notes, and sneaking photos of the furniture that I want to recreate when we get home!

Forgan's dining room.

The entrance to the restaurant.

Anyone who has seen my dining room in Hamilton knows why I took a picture of this sign!

Day Trip to Edinburgh

Emma and I took the train to Edinburgh this week for a college tour of the University of Edinburgh. As a Midwesterner, I'm always a little apprehensive about public transportation, but on this trip since it was just the two of us and we were going for the day with just small purses and a notebook, we went whole-hog and used public transportation the whole way there, and back. I'm really patting myself on the back for that one! We walked from our place to the bus station in town, hopped on a bus to the train station, then caught our train, and made it to Waverly station in the center of Edinburgh. We walked from there to the main campus of the university, which took about 20 minutes (it's supposed to take only 15, but I took a slightly wrong turn just after crossing the Royal Mile and since Old Town is such a maze of streets, that one small error caused us to be two entire stories too high, and it took five extra minutes of walking past overfilled rubbish bins and construction zones before we found our way again. It wasn't the best first impression to a college campus, certainly).

We had reserved a place in a one-hour tour of the main campus, and met our tour guide and a small group of parents and their prospective students at a wee visitor centre across from the Teviot Row House, which is one of the student union buildings. The Visitor Centre had a smattering of tshirts, sweatshirts, mugs and other college paraphernalia on offer, and there was a small stack of prospectuses in a white brochure case to one side. Other than that, it was a bit bare. Compared to American college welcome centers, with their plasma TV screens and their trifold glossy brochures, this welcome center was a bit utilitarian.

Teviot Row House, which is the world's oldest purpose-built student activities center.

Our hour-long tour, led by a Scottish medical student, only covered the basics. She took us to the main library, the law school (pictured below) and some of the student study spaces. She talked about some of large lecture theatres, mentioned housing very briefly, and pointed out various departments as we walked across the campus, but she didn't discuss at all entrance requirements since they would be different depending on intended area of study. Overall, we were surprised that the university has such a college-campus feel to it, given that it's only a few streets away from the chaotic Royal Mile and the decidedly down-market (and quite scary after dark!) Cowgate. Before the visit, I was only humouring Emma about the idea of her applying to attend school here, but after the visit, I would feel just a tiny bit more comfortable about the thought of her going to Edinburgh.

The Law School at Edinburgh

After our tour, we walked to New Town, and stopped in a sushi restaurant for lunch. We reviewed the prospectus she picked up at the end of the tour, and we discussed her overall impressions. While she loves the city of Edinburgh and would love to live there someday, I think we both think going to school overseas probably isn't for her in the end. I'm sure she will do a semester or perhaps a year abroad, but the idea of moving abroad at the age of 18 when so many of her family and friends are in or near Upstate New York sounds a bit too lonely for her at this point. I think she would be able to handle it, but I also think that once she starts visiting colleges in the U.S. seriously, she will realize that spending freshman year within 6 hours of Hamilton is a better option for her. (and it's definitely a better option for us!)

After lunch, we spent a few hours shopping in New Town. We are both devoted Cath Kidston fans, so we popped in there one last time for this visit to the UK, and we spent a good few hours in Primark looking for some summer clothes to wear on our upcoming trip to Italy. We don't have any summer clothes with us since it still hasn't gotten much over 60 degrees F here, and probably won't before we leave in early June. It was a bright sunny day, and the streets were filled with people out for a stroll or an afternoon coffee. The gardens on Princes Street were in full bloom, and I was a bit sad that Leah wasn't with us since there's a fabulous garden at the foot of Edinburgh Castle with a playground that provides amazing photo opportunities. On the other hand, since it was just the two of us we were free to stroll and shop at our leisure for the afternoon, until it was time to walk back to the train station to catch a 5pm train back to St. Andrews.

Castles Close to Home

I took my sister and brother-in-law to the airport last weekend, , but we couldn't resist a few last visits to castles on the way. This time, we took Leah along and left Emma and John at home. We started with a lovely breakfast at Balgove Larder in St. Andrews, which is a farm shop and tea room with fabulous scones and coffee, to give our visitors one last chance at a full Scottish breakfast. Then we hit the road and drove to Loch Leven for a visit to the castle where Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned for over a year after she was forced to abdicate the throne.

Loch Leven castle from the mainland. The yellow flowers in front are rapeseed,
and they are in bloom absolutely everywhere in Scotland. Beautiful!

When we presented our tickets and reserved a spot on the wee boat that was going to ferry us across the loch to the castle, the Historic Scotland representative asked us if we minded a few loch flies. He said the first "hatching" of flies had just occurred, so we may encounter a few on our travels. We assured him we were tough...since loch flies aren't the biting midges that Scots call "wee beasties," we figured, "How bad can it be?" Twenty minutes later, as we disembarked from the small motor boat onto the island, we realized that it was bad indeed. We started by commenting on the sheer number of flies, then laughed as they got tangled in our hair and stuck to our eyelashes. We quickly learned to keep our mouths closed shut, though, as we noticed that some of them were even getting stuck in our teeth! Leah found a stick, and traveled throughout the castle by waving it in front of her face. That caused just as much of a hazard as the flies, so we made it a very quick visit!

Leah trying to fend off the midges with a stick!

We also stopped at Blackness Castle, which was a military fortree just outside Edinburgh on the Firth of Forth, and then Linlithgow Palace a few miles up the road, which was a place of decoration and leisure for the Mary Queen of Scots crowd. Leah was quite castled-out at this point, and I could tell she was a bit relieved when we collapsed into a booth at a pub down the lane from the Palace.

Guarding the doors at Linlithgow Palace

The next day, Emma and Leah and I toured a few more castles. We stopped at Kellie Castle, which is very close to St. Andrews. It’s in wonderful condition, and fully furnished, with a lovely set of nursery rooms full of antique toys and dolls. The folks who run the castle gave Leah a photo trail as we entered, and so she was busy looking for certain items in each room as we walked through the castle…a tradition that most castles uphold and that provides great incentive to press on when the toddler has grown weary of furniture and portraits and elaborate ceilings.  At the end, we traded the completed photo trail for a wee bit of chocolate, and that bought us a quick tour of the castle’s lovely gardens. As soon as the chocolate ran out, Leah was pretty much done too, though we did convince her to stop at the castle’s adventure playground for a few minutes.

We also stopped at Stirling Castle, since Historic Scotland was hosting a Scottish fashion show in the afternoon. The show was put on by a local design school, and in addition to the traditional runway show, they had a series of hands-on activites and workshops for kids throughout the castle. Emma and Leah took advantage of the huge collection of historic costumes the students had brought with them, and they assembled a few outfits for themselves. They also created a small puppet for Leah to take home, out of scraps of fabric and other bits and bobs. There was a hair braiding demonstration too, but Emma wasn’t interested since she can braid her own hair very well, and thankfully Leah was content just to watch for a few minutes, rather than to volunteer her head of hair. I was kind of glad, since her zig-zag ear-to-ear scar from her craniosynostosis surgeries can be a bit off-putting to people who don’t know her story, and I didn’t want to get into the whole discussion with the poor student that ended up braiding her hair!

Edzell, Glamis and a Quadventure!

We wrapped up our castle tour with a few more visits, and a surprise, which I will leave for the last paragraph. First, we stopped at Edzell Castle, a 16th century castle in ruins that is most famous for its 17th century walled garden. The garden features a glorious collection of roses, hemmed in by formal boxwood hedges, but since the roses aren't yet blooming and the boxwood was suffering from a major case of blight, it wasn't the loveliest garden we have visited. It was redeemed, however, by the gorgeous bathhouse in the corner of the garden and the peacock roaming the grounds. We did enjoy the relief carvings in the garden walls that depict the seven cardinal virtues on one side, the seven liberal arts on a second, and the seven planetary dieties on a third. For £2, we bought a guidebook in the ticket office, and had a great time going through the gardens and reading about each relief.

My sister in the garden at Edzell

Emma reviews the guide book

The garden and the ruins at Edzell Castle

One of the Liberal Arts reliefs

A sea of daffodils

An added bonus to our visit to Edzell was the drive to the castle. Along the way, we passed a daffodil farm, and there were fields and fields full of daffodils in full bloom. Again the blue sky and white clouds, the rows and rows of yellow were just stunning. The field extended right up to the castle walls, and to one side, there was a field full of white poet daffodils in full bloom. It was lovely!

After a quick tour, we ventured on to Glamis Castle. Emma and I have visited before, but since this is a guided tour and it's a bit different every time, it's always an enjoyable one. This time, though, just after the guide told us about the story of the castle's resident ghost who lives in the chapel, I swore I heard a whispering in my ear as we crossed into the drawing room Creepy! That may be my last visit to Glamis!

The gardens at Glamis are always a highlight, so we enjoyed an hour-long stroll through the walled garden and the Italian garden. There's a nice collection of conifers at Glamis, and a wooded walk along a stream as well. 

Glamis also has a herd of Highland cows (pronounced "coos"), and in the spring when the babies arrive it's such fun to have a look. We couldn't find the herd this time, so we had to stop along the side of the road on the way home to grab some photos instead!

The next day, we decided to give Scotland's castles a rest, and we left Emma at home and took John for a treat. That poor kid has missed out on our adventures since he is still in class, though touring historically furnished castles isn't really his thing. So, we booked an ATV tour for the four of us in Perthshire. The tour was led by a Lithuanian guy who leases land from a local farmer, and when we arrived he gave us a quick safety demonstration and had us put on full suits and helmets. It was a dry day so the suits were probably unnecessary, but I was happy about the helmets as Perthshire is pretty rocky! He gave us each a 125cc quad bike, and took us to a pasture full of lambs to try it out. John and Ted and I had a blast zooming around the pasture, and my sister tolerated it all quite well. After a bit, he took us up a steep hill and we continued to zoom up and down for a bit. The he offered to take us on some trails, and the three of us managed to convince Amy to agree. I could tell by her face that she wasn't thrilled but she went along anyway.

The guide took this picture of the four of us at the very top of the trail, and I took this photo of John on the way down. It's not easy to take a picture while on a quad bike!

This was a fabulous afternoon out! John gave it a big thumbs-up, as did the rest of us...even Amy!

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