The Brooch that Clasps the Highlands and Lowlands Together
21-July-2022
Findochty to Stirling
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| Scotland |
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| Moray |
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| We travelled from Findochty on the Moray Coast to Stirling The Cairngorms is the large green splodge lying right in the way |
The alternative route via Braemar is 16 miles shorter, but goes straight(ish) through the Cairngorms National Park, not round it like
the A9. Google thinks it takes half an hour longer – rather over-estimating the
speed a sane person drives on twisting, narrow (sometimes ‘single-track,’) roads.
The Cairngorms contain all the highest mountains of the British Isles, except Ben Nevis, at 1,345m (4,413ft), the highest of them all, which is something of an outlier. Perhaps oddly there was little mountainous to see from the road.
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| Into the Cairngorms |
All the land north and west of the Great Glen, the geological fault running NE across Scotland from Fort William to Inverness, is in the
Highland Council District. This is neat, tidy and has a natural boundary, but
the Highland District bulges across the Great Glen to include part of the
Cairngorms National Park, largely the part with the mountains. I suppose it
would be odd if most of Scotland’s highest peaks were not in the Highlands, but
to my tidy little mathematical mind, it feels unsatisfactory.
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| Perhaps that's a mountain down there. Not all the roads in the Cairngorms are twisty |
Braemar
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| Aberdeenshire |
Braemar, nestled in the hills beside the River Dee, is a remarkably pretty village, in the way most Scottish villages aren’t. Obviously
affluent, and with the buildings and streets cheerfully bedecked with flowers,
Braemar is 10 miles from Balmoral Castle, the summer home of
the queen.
Lunchtime had arrived, so we stopped for a cup of tea and a sandwich at the café in the rather splendid Duke of Rothesay Pavilion in the
Highland Games Centre. Then we went to look at the stadium.
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| Braemar Highland Games Centre. If I had told them I was coming, there might have been a crowd |
Highland Gatherings (or Games) claim to be descended from events held in the reign of Malcolm Canmore (r1058-93) but are largely a
19th century invention and the wearing of kilts and tartans a reaction to their
being banned a couple of centuries previously after the Jacobite Rebellion
(1745).
Wikipedia gives the impression that Highland Gatherings were now largely an American occupation. Not so, there are 24 major
games held in Scotland every year during spring and summer. There are
competitions in running, ‘heavy events’ like throwing weights for distance or height and tossing the caber, as well as cultural
events like Highland Dancing and playing the bagpipes (is that really cultural?).
Braemar is not the biggest event, but it is the one attended every year by the Queen. [Update: though sadly not in 2022. The Queen was unwell and died, aged 96, some five days after the games were held.] I am
not a natural royalist, but it is hard not to admire someone who took an oath
to do something in 1952, and kept on doing it – and rarely putting a foot wrong
– until 2022.
We thought we had left the Cairngorms, but discovered they continue some way further south of Braemar…
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| More of the Cairngorms |
…after which the sat nav sent us through a labyrinth of minor roads, before eventually decanting us onto the A9 near Perth and thence to Stirling.
Stirling
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| Stirling C A |
Stirling Council Area, one of Scotland’s 32 administrative districts, is a rough rectangle bounded by the Firth of Forth and Loch Lomond. The north and west is sparsely populated highland, the south and east is flat agricultural land – the flood plain of the River Forth. The 93,000 inhabitants mostly live in and around the city of Stirling in the south east corner.
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| Stirling Council Area |
Crossing the plain towards Stirling, the rocky outcrop, topped by the castle, becomes increasingly prominent. Leaving the motorway, the
signed route into the city centre surprisingly climbs the back of the outcrop,
passes the castle and then funnels new arrivals down St John Street. Like most Scottish towns and cities, Stirling, is built of dour, dark grey stone. Without the hanging baskets of Braemar, or the
least hint of sunshine, it is not a welcoming sight.
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| Stirling |
Conveniently, we passed The Golden Lion, our base for the next two nights – at least it would have been convenient had we not missed it on the first pass.
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| The Golden Lion, Stirling |
Inside, the hotel’s décor and furnishings (not really my subjects) seemed stuck in the 1980s, but the staff were pleasant and efficient. The bar staff provided me with what I needed after a long drive,...
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| The Golden Lion, Stirling |
... the restaurant staff were cheerful and efficient and later, when we had a small plumbing problem, the receptionists, listened, smilingly promised
to get it fixed, and did so. The restaurant menu also had a 1980s vibe, though somebody
was tuned into the zeitgeist, the lump of haggis accompanying my chicken
breast was described as a ‘bonbon’.
22-July-2022
We arranged our Stirling visits for geographical convenience, for blogging I have rearranged them in a more historical and narrative-friendly
order.
A castle has stood on Stirling’s rocky crop possibly since Roman times, certainly from before 1110. It encompasses so much of Stirling’s history
that I will come to it at the end.
Stirling Old Bridge
Stirling’s importance does not just come from a rocky outcrop, for centuries it was the lowest crossing point on the River
Forth. (For lower modern crossings see Edinburgh (2) ).
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| Stirling Old Bridge |
Stirling Old Bridge is a 4-arch stone bridge on a foundation of rubble sitting on a meander north of the old town. It is 82m
long and was built around 1500. A new road bridge was built nearby in 1833 and
the Old Bridge was closed to wheeled vehicles – there is now an exemption for bicycles
which did not exist in 1833.
The Battle of Stirling Bridge
A Little History
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| Alexander III, St Giles, Edinburgh photo: Kim Traynor |
The several claimants to the throne brought Scotland to the brink of civil war, so the Guardians invited Edward I of England to
adjudicate. Edward was already involved, his late sister had been Alexander III’s
wife and his son, the future Edward II had been betrothed to young Margaret. He
was also a top-grade medieval war lord, and so took the opportunity to increase
his personal fiefdom. In 1290, after inserting his own men into positions of
power as a condition for making the decision, he selected John Balliol, judging
him the most easily controllable.
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| John Balliol Forman Armorial, 1562 |
Edward tired of his incompetence and deposed him in 1296. A rebellion against Edward I’s appointees followed and William Wallace, previously an obscure minor noble from Strathclyde and Andrew Moray became the leaders.
Edward I was busy in France so he sent the Earl of Surrey, and Hugh de
Cressingham to sort it out. Their army met that of Wallace and Moray at Stirling
Bridge
The Battle
Wallace’s 6,000 men occupied the flat, soft ground north of the river with Surrey’s 9,000 on the south. Sir Richard Lundie, one of the
Scots fighting for Surrey (few of these battles were as simply Scots v English
as some like to think) offered to lead 60 knights to a crossing place and
outflank Wallace. Surrey declined and opted for frontal assault and sent his
cavalry across the bridge onto the soft ground. Maybe they charged, but wooden bridge
was narrow and the ground boggy.
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| A cavalry charge across here looks a bad idea, and the 'old Old Bridge' was 200 years earlier |
Wallace watched the cavalry flounder, then watched the infantry follow and at the right moment closed the circle about them and started hewing them down. Reinforcements could not get through and Surry’s men still south of the bridge watched helplessly. They were not trained professional soldiers, there were none in those days, they were just peasants following their lord into battle; they would do some killing and pick up some booty, but they had no intention of hanging around waiting to die, so they left. Battle over.
This was not a battle near a bridge, the bridge was essential to the battle. 'Braveheart', a film I shall mention again later, managed to film their Battle of Stirling Bridge without a bridge - and that was not the worst error.
The Wallace Memorial
The Wallace Monument
The Wallace Monument is an ugly 67m tower on Abbey Craig overlooking the battlefield. It was built by public subscription, fundraising
began in 1851 and the foundation stone was laid by the Duke of Atholl in 1861. It was completed in 1869.
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| The Wallace Memorial on Abbey Craig |
Inside there are three exhibition rooms and 265 steps to the viewpoint. We had a light lunch
in the café in the woods below, but did not bother to go in.
Although Wallace was a member of the minor nobility nothing is known of his youth - even his father’s name is disputed.
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| William Wallace, Edinburgh Photo Kim Traynor |
The next summer Edward I came north himself and defeated Wallace at Falkirk in July. Wallace left for the continent but made
the mistake of returning a few years later. He was hunted down and executed in 1305.
Wallace achieved far more in legend than in real life. The sources for the legend are a poem called The Wallace by ‘Blind Harry’
written about 1477 and the anachronistic ramblings of Mel Gibson’s Braveheart.
The Battle of Bannockburn
On this trip we have visited arguably the two most important battlefields in Scotland, Culloden (1745) a week ago and today Bannockburn (1314), just south of Stirling.
A Little More History
After seeing off Wallace, Edward I went away to deal with more important matters. He returned and campaigned in 1304, leaving convinced
he had added Scotland to a portfolio that already included Gascony (among other parts of France), England, Ireland and Wales.
However, two claimants to the Scottish throne still survived, John Comyn, Lord of Badenoch, and Robert the Bruce, Lord of
Annandale. In 1306 they met to discuss their differences in the chapel of
Greyfriars in Dumfries
(we visited 2023). Robert the Bruce won the argument by stabbing Comyn to
death, thus becoming King Robert I of Scotland. He then captured a few castles.
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| Robert the Bruce as he may have looked at Bannockburn Pilkington Jackson, 1964 |
Edward was now over 60, an old man for the time, so he stayed home and sent an army to sort out the problem. Bruce was defeated at the
Battle of Methven and went into hiding. Edward’s army recaptured some castles and came home.
Bruce renewed his activities in 1307, so Edward decided to deal with him himself. He marched north, but developed dysentery and died in Burgh by Sands just south of
the Scottish border.
He was succeeded by his son, Edward II. Unlike his father Edward II was a reluctant warrior and only felt the need to act in 1314 when
Bruce besieged Stirling Castle.
The Battle
Edward rushed towards Stirling arriving on the 23rd of June 1314, with a large army (20-25,000) of tired men. How anybody arrived
anywhere with the maps available at the time is a mystery to me.
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| A contemporary map of Great Britain, Bannockburn visitor centre |
Bruce, with only 5-8,000 men, was headquartered where the Memorial now stands.
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| The Bannockburn Memorial |
Edward's men were across the battlefield to the south.
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| The Bannockburn Battlefield - not a very interesting picture! |
On the 23rd an English flanking manoeuvre with 300 men resulted in a skirmish where an undisciplined and over-confident charge preceded a rout.
Edward’s tired and now dispirited men spent an
uncomfortable night in a boggy field beside the Bannockburn.
The next morning Edward brought his men across the burn, but they were still on boggy land. A deserter had informed Robert that English morale
was low and advised him to attack. He marched his men forward.
The sudden arrival of well drilled schiltrons of pikemen further unnerved Edaward’s army. With their knights pinned in boggy
ground between the schiltrons and the burn, and the support of their archers doing
more damaged to their own men than the enemy, the battle was soon over. Edward
II scuttled south leaving Robert I unchallenged King of Scotland.
Edward II was neither a warrior nor a leader of men. In 1327 he was deposed by his own mother and her lover Roger Mortimer and
murdered shortly afterwards. His son, Edward III turned out to be better suited
to the job.
Stirling Castle
No one knows who first claimed the rocky outcrop now surmounted by Stirling Castle, but it is such an obvious defensive point it must have attracted peoples now long-forgotten whose names were never written down.
From the plain the current buildings still look forbidding - Stirling Castle represented
Colditz Castle in the opening shots of the 1970s TV series – but the outcrop is
of the ‘crag and tail’ variety. The older parts of the city spread down the
tail and as we walked up the main street the city would have merged into the
castle were there not a gate and a young woman checking tickets.
Most surviving structures are from the 15th and 16th centuries. Some are a little older, others younger and the ‘outer defences’ beyond the
town gate, are 18th century and now enclose a garden showing how the castle eventually
morphed into a palace.
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| Inside the Outer Defences, Stirling Castle |
To the southwest is the Kings Knot, a 12th century park once used for jousting, hawking and hunting. In the 1490s, James IV planted fruit
trees, flowers and ornamental hedges, and the earthwork was constructed for the
Scottish coronation of Charles I’s in 1633. Stirling Heritage Trust say the most
impressive view of the castle is from this earthwork.
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| The King's Knott by Stirling Castle |
The castle’s first appearance in written record was surprisingly late when King Alexander I dedicated a chapel here in 1110. Stirling became a
Royal Burgh and an administrative centre in the reign of Alexander’s successor
(and brother) David I (r1124-53).
Being situated at almost the narrowest part of
Scotland with the Highlands to the north and the Lowlands to the south, Stirling’s
strategic importance led to the saying, ‘he who holds Stirling holds Scotland.’
The Castle has thus been besieged seven
times, most frequently during the wars with Edward I of England, and most
recently by Charle Edward Stuart in 1745 during his abortive attempt to regain
the crown for the Stuarts.
Through a gate…
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| Into the Inner Ward, Stirling Castle |
…we entered an older section of the castle, though more Stuart than medieval.
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| In the inner ward, Stirling Castle |
Inside there was a minstrel to pluck a tune on his lute to accompany our visit.
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| Minstrel, Stirling Castle |
We admired the tapestries…
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| Tapestries, Stirling Castle |
…. and the queen’s bedchamber. She did not sleep here, she had a smaller, more personal room behind, this one was just for show.
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| Queens Bedchamber, Stirling Castle |
The Stirling Heads – 16th century medallions, a metre in diameter, with carvings of kings, queens, nobles, Roman emperors, biblical figures and characters from classical mythology - decorated the palace ceilings until a collapse in 1777.
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| One of the Stirling Heads |
Back outside we approached the North Gate, in part dating from the 1380s making it the oldest structure in the castle.
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| The North Gate, Stirling Castle |
And so our castle visit came to an end.
The Maharajah
Like many Scottish towns Stirling has many restaurants opening 10.00 to 5.00 pm for coffee, lunch and tea, but surprisingly few offer dinner. Eating out on a Friday night requires booking, and doing so earlier than we did.
However, we had exhausted the delights of the hotel menu, and The Maharajah may have maintained a low profile on the internet and local guides, but it was just across the road. Small Indian restaurants are very variable and we had no local knowledge, but we decided to chance our luck. And lucky we were, The Maharajah fed us well, so now we have local knowledge I can advise travellers searching for an evening meal in Stirling to visit the Maharajah.
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| The Maharajah, Stirling |
I was not surprised by the number of cyclists coming in carrying the distinctive boxes of Deliveroo and its competitors, they soon
loaded up and peddled off, but what surprised me was that most were not youngsters
but men in their 50s or 60s’
The End
So our 2022 Scottish sojourn ended with our best meal out since our first night in Glasgow. The next day we made the long drive home.
Part 1: Glasgow (1) Irn Bru, The Clyde and La Lanterna:
Part 2: Glasgow (2): A Walking Tour
Part 3: The Battle of Culloden and Cawdor Castle
Part 4: Fraserburgh and Portsoy
Part 5: Huntly and Fyvie
Part 6: Findochty, Portknockie and Cullen
Part 7: Stirling