A couple of solid days’ travel have taken us from the wilds of Southern Africa to the quiet Scottish town of Linlithgow, just outside Edinburgh. Transiting through Johannesburg and London has probably softened the culture shock.
Our flight from Windhoek was at a civilized time, but our Johannesburg to London leg was an 8:00am departure. It was a daytime flight, with just an hour’s time difference, so jetlag wasn’t a problem, but nevertheless it was a big day. Heathrow to Edinburgh was even more civilized. We even had time for a Maccas Breakfast - not our normal preference, but prices at our hotel were a bit beyond our budget.
Linlithgow is only about 20 minutes from Edinburgh Airport, so we picked up our hire car, shopped and were settled in by beer o’clock. Our Airbnb is practically in the Tesco’s carpark, so we are just a short stroll away from all the basics.
It has continued to be warm, no, hot here, up around 24C with bright sunshine. We are not complaining, but we haven’t lumped all our warm gear here to leave it in our bags. Ah, but there is still Iceland to come.
Today we took advantage of the great weather and headed up the Fife coast to a few of the picturesque fishing villages that snuggle into natural and man-made harbours on the Scottish coast. Even though it was the last day of the Easter holidays, the traffic up the coast was light and we found free parking in all of the villages. Coming home was another matter. For about 10 kms before the Forth of Forth bridge, we crawled along the M9 motorway along with half the population of Edinburgh returning from Easter holidays.
24 April, Linlithgow
Our luck with the weather ended today with a cold overcast day and a maximum temperature more than 10C down on yesterday. The change was forecast, but it was still a bit of a shock. Taking advantage of the nice day yesterday, we did the rounds of the medieval castles, homes and abbeys around Fife; Doune, Castle Campbell, Culross and Dunfermline. We had decided to purchase a Historic Scotland Explorer Pass to cover the often expensive entry fees for many of the places we planned to visit. We also have a current National Trust of Scotland membership which we purchased last year. These passes can save a lot of money, but they can be a bit of a trap if places are visited simply to get the value out of the card. After a while the castles become a little repetitive. Doune castle was particularly interesting for us because the movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” was filmed here and the commentary included many references to the movie. The Outlander series was also shot here, but as we hadn’t seen the series the link meant little to us.
Some years back, while visiting Sterling Castle, we were struck with a very strong sense of déja vu. It took us a little time to realise that we had visited the castle just a year or so earlier. We had much the same feeling at Dunfermline Abbey. We are sure we have been there before as well, however, we are fairly sure we hadn’t previously found the grave of Robert the Bruce who is buried beneath the pulpit of the Abbey Church.
The castles we visited today were nowhere near as interesting, but it could have been the weather or a dose of castle overload.
We did break the castle theme today, however, with a visit to the Falkirk Wheel, an amazing piece of engineering that allows canal boats to be hoisted and lowered 30 metres between the Forth and Clyde canals, rather than moving slowly through many locks to achieve the same outcome. We also stopped off at “The Kelpies” - nothing to do with the lovable Australian breed of dogs, but an enormous sculpture in shiny metal of two fabled water horses of Scottish mythology. We hadn’t heard of the sculptures before, but we had spotted them from the motorway a couple of days ago.
27 April, Alford
Our main reason for settling ourselves in this fairly out of the way part of the Highlands is to visit some of the haunts of our Gauld relatives, some of whom migrated from these parts in the early 20th century. The family either left Scotland for foreign shores, mainly Australia and the USA, or Brigadoon-like (Google it) never strayed far from home. Within a 30 km radius of our rented cottage we found family gravestones in tiny, sometimes now deserted, villages that dated back as far as the early 19th century. Sadly, the real prize, the grave of Janita’s great-great-great-great grandfather, James Gauld, eluded us. We know James died in 1809 and that he was buried in St Mary’s Kirkyard in Auchindoir. The church is now just a ruin maintained by Historic Scotland and the graveyard is full of heavily weathered gravestones that were impossible to read. He was born in 1735, and as far as Gauld family members’ research takes us, is the “father” of generations of Gaulds in Australia and the USA.
We also managed to squeeze in a couple more castles on our way to the many remote churches we found. There is always an interesting history to go with all these places, but it gets a bit too confusing for those of us not that familiar with the centuries of intrigue that surround Scottish and English history. Nevertheless, the ruins of these old castles and palaces have many little known secrets. We have become keen hunters of masons’ marks. We were first made aware of masons’ marks last year while visiting Salisbury Cathedral and since then we have hunted them all over Europe.
The marks were made by the stonemasons to identify their handiwork and ensure they were paid for work completed. In significant buildings such as large cathedrals, there may be many dozens, or even hundreds of different masons contributing to the construction over many decades. The masons’ marks tell us a lot about how the work was allocated. The more complicated works are the preserves of the master masons and their marks dominate in areas where higher levels skill are required. In areas like stairwells, marks from many different masons can be found. The attraction for us in all of this is the direct links these simple tradesmen’s marks create between us and those who laboured in these buildings up to 1000 years ago. As well,some of Janita’s forebears were masons.
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