Crossed the border into Scotland today. In spite of the Scottish National Party attempting to cede away from the UK the place seems much like the rest of the UK - ie. astonishingly beautiful and chock full of history and interesting bits.
Today had two particular highlights (three if you ask my Dad, but i think he was being a bit silly).
First highlight: Hadrian's Wall. This wall pretty much cutting off the Scots from Roman England is usually considered the north-west limit of the Roman Empire. Much of the wall has been destroyed today, stolen in order to construct roads and other buildings, but large portions of it remain today in a ruined state. We inspected one of the ruined fortresses that are located at intervals along the wall - this one would have housed about 800 soldiers at its peak, and is fairly large as a result. The borderlands between Scotland and England where the wall is located is quite bleak and windy, and it's easy to imagine a Roman soldier being fairly lonely and homesick there (i enjoyed it thoroughly and resisted the temptation to yell 'Hadriaaannnn!'.
Highlight the second: Sir Walter Scott's house. I don't know too much about Sir Walter Scott, and i wasn't expecting much from the author's house (Abbotsford). However, it was a remarkable experience. First of all, the house is very large for someone who wasn't royalty. Second of all, Sir Walter was a truly spectacular collector of all sorts of historical memorabilia - the house boasts (amongst other things) Marie Antoinette's clock, Rob Roy's hunting rifle, and two armour pieces from the battle of Waterloo. I couldn't come close to listing the memorabilia on display, but there is also a truly frightening collection of pistols, muskets, rifles, axes, swords, rapiers, elaborate daggers and other more exotic weapons. The third (and most significant) reason that i enjoyed the house was the guided tour - the fellow who gave it was immensely passionate about his subject, and imbued the topic with such enthusiasm that even someone like myself who knows almost nothing about Sir Walter was forced to be very interested. Without a doubt this was one of the big highlights of this trip - and a very surprising one at that.
After finishing up at Abbotsford we drove on to Glasgow. We had intended on going to Edinsburgh, but it is Bank Holiday long weekend and there is no accomodation in Edinsburgh because there is some huge marathon going on, so we came here instead. We'll be staying here for a couple of days, and it will probably be more of an R&R time than sightseeing - we all need it.
Hope things are good back in the Southern Hemisphere!
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2 comments:
So what was the third highlight according to your dad?
Walter Scott's house does sound really interesting. I hope you took lots of photos of the weapons: I need reference photos of exotic weapons for Deadmarch. ;-)
The third highlight according to dad was the lunch we had - but mum and i think he was mad - it was a bog standard fish and chips.
Unfortunately i couldn't take any photos in Walter Scott's house - they're very strict about indoor photography.
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