Falkirk, Scotland '23 Part 1

A Big House, Two Kelpies and a Remarkable Wheel

Scotland

Falkirk District Council

We paused in Falkirk two years ago en route from Forres to Lanark. This year we returned, because we felt there was more to see. Wikipedia tells me that a 2011 STV poll voted Falkirk Scotland's most beautiful town, but the tourist route from Edinburgh still crosses the Forth Bridge and heads directly for the scenic charms of the Highlands, heedlessly by-passing Falkirk. With limited time, I might do the same, but with a less hurried itinerary…

Forres, Falkirk and Lanark are marked in red
Thanks to Lonely Planet for lending me their map

12-July-2023

Falkirk

Central Scotland sometimes feels like a vast agglomeration of small towns all running one into another until eventually they reach either Glasgow or Edinburgh. That is, of course, an exaggeration, aerial photos show extensive green space in Central Scotland - but they can be harder to find on the ground.

Falkirk’s earliest recorded name was the Brythonic Egglesbreth meaning ‘speckled church.’ Other names, An Eaglais Bhreac (Scottish Gaelic) Varia Capella (Latin), La Veire Chapelle (Normans) and Fawkirk, later Falkirk (Scots) have the same meaning. The relevant church was probably built in the 7th century

Now best known for having a not particularly successful football team, Falkirk is a small town with around 35,000 inhabitants. It is the administrative centre of Falkirk District Council which covers the town and a dozen or more smaller communities, including the port and petrochemicals centre of Grangemouth, and Stenhousemuir, home of an even less successful professional football team. Falkirk District has a population of 160,000.

In the course of this post we will visit Falkirk town centre, The Pineapple House to the north, Helix Park to the east and the Falkirk Wheel to the west

Falkirk Centre

We arrived in late afternoon and checked into the Park Hotel. Built in the later years of the last century, it would win no architectural awards, the kindest word I can say for it is functional. The receptionist, though, was cheerful and welcoming and we booked dinner – we have learned in Scotland that no booking can result in a frustrating search.

Our room overlooked Dollar Park, a pleasant aspect.

Dollar Park (across the lovely expanse of the hotel car park!)

Needing a pharmacy (nothing major) we walked the five minutes into Falkirk's almost pedestrianised town centre. The outskirts of the town had mixed industrial, commercial and domestic properties, but the hotel was surrounded by larger more prosperous homes. We passed a row of smaller, nicely kept bungalows, the gardens of three adjacent houses so spectacular they must enjoy their rivalry.

The town centre looks rather less prosperous with too many shops closed and some of the survivors looking down at heal. A loose cluster of three shops, Whimsic Alley…

Whimsic Alley, Falkirk

…The Lonely Broomstick, and Shining Light, ‘Scotland's centre for tarot reading,’ made us wonder if we had walked into some Poundshop Glastonpotter.

The Lonely Broomstick, Falkirk

We are twice tapped for money, once by an elderly busker, who stopped playing to ensure be got paid, and by a somewhat confused woman who was not as old as she first appeared and apparently wanted us to fund her drug habit. These accusations are easy to throw about, but I know nothing of her life and what led her to approaching strangers for money on the street. It cannot be easy for her, and I should be less judgmental. We gave her a pound, 'for food.'

The High Street widens into the Market Square, overlooked by the Falkirk Steeple. In England a steeple is always part of a church, in Scotland a free-standing steeple sometimes houses the tolbooth (formerly the Town Hall/Gaol) (see Dumfries for another example). The first steeple on this site was constructed in 1697 and demolished because of subsidence in 1803. The current steeple was built in 1814 to house the town clock and bells and also contains two cells (unused since 1860).

Falkirk Steeple

A plaque on the steeple wall drew our attention to the nearby Cross Well, a cylinder of stones surmounted by a barely recognisable lion. In 1817 the Earl of Callendar drew the first clean water available in the town centre and, according to the plaque, addressed his remarks to the ‘wives and bairns of Falkirk.’ The people of Falkirk have called themselves ‘the bairns’ ever since. Alternatively, the name comes from the town’s old motto Touch Ane, Touch A' - Better Meddle Wi' the Deil then the Bairns o' Falkirk. I do not know which came first, but they sound aggressive.

Cross Well, Falkirk

Having located the pharmacy, we continued through the town centre past the mandatory ‘House where Robert Burns slept’…

Burns slept in many place
It is surprising how many 18th century buildings survive

… to the end of pedestrianised zone where we were rewarded with a view of the next section of the town. We have seen tower blocks like these before (and there are more than this picture shows) but only in Eastern Europe, left over from the days before the collapse of the Soviet Union.

A view of Falkirk's 'Stalinist Quarter'

13-July-2023

Dollar Park

Filling in time before Callendar House opened we strolled across the road to Dollar Park, named after lumber baron and shipping magnate Robert Dollar who donated it to his home town.

It is a pleasant little park containing the town’s war memorial,…

Falkirk war memorial

…some venerable trees…

Old tree, Dollar Park, Falkirk

… and a flower clock (with correct time) in memory of Falkirk born botanist and plant hunter George Forrest

George Forrest flower clock, Dollar Park, Falkirk

Callendar House

In the dip behind the unlovely tower blocks, is a very different type of building.

Callendar House, Falkirk

Callendar House, now owned by Falkirk Council and run as a museum, is surrounded by Callendar Park. Although modified in the 19th century to resemble a French Renaissance Chateau, the core of the building is a 14th century tower house.

Callendar House, Falkirk

By the start of late middle-ages the diverse inhabitants of the area were blending together. The Old Welsh speaking Brythonic people who had been here since before the Romans had been joined by the Scots, a Gaelic speaking tribe who arrived from Ireland in the 9th century. Then came Saxons, pushed north by the invading Normans, and later by Normans invited by King David I (ruled 1124-53) because he admired Norman civilization. The King himself was a descendant of the Pictish ruling family from further north who started styling themselves Rex Scottorum in the 12th century.

Local rulers were the Thanes of Callendar, the remains of their Thane House lie just east of the current building. The 5th Thane, Sir Patrick Callendar backed one of the many losers in the Scottish Wars 1296-1328, and David II (the son of the winner, Robert the Bruce – descended from the Norman de Brus family) gave the Callendar lands to Sir William Livingstone (descended from the Saxon Leving family) in 1345.

They built the Tower House at the heart of the modern building and by the 17th century had developed it considerably.

Callendar House in the 17th century

Like the Callendars before them, the Livingstons lost the house when James Livingston, 5th Earl of Linlithgow backed the wrong side, in his case the Jacobites in 1715. The estates were forfeited and sold to the York Buildings Company who immediately leased it back to the earl’s daughter Lady Anne Livingston. She and her husband made the same mistake in 1745, he was executed, but she was allowed to stay in the house and so was her son until his death in 1778.

The house was put up for auction and William Forbes, an Aberdeen coppersmith who made his pile from Royal Navy contracts, outbid Lord Errol. Times were changing,

Callendar house during the Forbes times (Public Domain, borrowed from Wikipedia)

Forbes built the house as it is today, and his descendants kept it for 200 years, but nothing lasts forever. In 1963 it was sold to Falkirk Burgh and in 2011 transferred to the Falkirk Community Trust. It is now part stately home, part museum and part art gallery.

The stately home includes the restored Georgian kitchen….

Georgian kitchen, Callendar House

…and the grand staircase…

Staircase, Callendar House

…which is even better looking up.

Staircase ceiling, Callendar House

The museum deals with the history of the house and the effects of the industrial revolution. William Forbes and men like him ensured Falkirk was a centre of the Scottish industry.

The town was home to several ironworks, producing domestic and industrial products. The three-legged cauldron was typical of Falkirk.

Falkirk ironware, Callendar House

Some produced items so exquisite they could only be given to important retirees and whose only real use is to adorn a museum.

Beautiful but unusable tee service, Callendar House

Less threatening to the environment than the ironworks were clockmakers. Peter Keir worked in the High Street from 1806-34. William Dobbie founded a clockmaker’s that prospered for three generations and John Russell became watchmaker to the Prince Regent.

Falkirk Clocks

The gallery during our visit displayed the works of Falkirk born Barbara Rae who specialises in rather impressive industrial scenes…

Barbara Rae industrial scene

…and equally fine landscapes and seascapes.

Barbara Rae seascape

It is a house well worth a visit, and not all the attractions are inside…

The Antonine Wall

Everyone knows about Hadrian’s Wall. Completed in 122CE, it stretches some 73 miles (117km) across northern England from the Solway Firth to the North Sea.

The Antonine Wall is less well known. Built 20 years later an 70 miles further north it crosses the thinnest part of Scotland - 37 miles (59 km) between the Firth of Clyde and Forth. Built of turf on a stone foundation it had mile forts like Hadrian's Wall, though everything was to a smaller scale.

Altar from an Antonine Wall mile fort, Callendar House
Inscription reads (P)ro se et svis - I discharged this vow on behalf of myself and my family)

Antoninus’ rule was marked by peace throughout the empire, except in Scotland, where his little adventure started well, but the Caledonians proved recalcitrant and after 20 years of trying the Romans retreated to Hadrian’s wall. There is not a great deal left of the Antonine Wall, but enough for its line to be easily traced. It crosses the land of Callendar House, and if this it not the most spectacular section, it is the only part I have photographed.

A part of the Antonine Wall

The Dunmore Pineapple

Some 8 miles (11 km) north of Falkirk centre, just beyond the village of Airth, tucked away in the countryside and surrounded by trees is what some claim to be the strangest building in Scotland. It is easy enough to find, if you have faith that the track your sat nav has chosen will not peter out in a forest.

Lynne and the Dunmore Pineapple

It is hard to imagine the excitement caused in the 17th century by the arrival of the pineapple on our damp, misty island. Pineapples were exotic and difficult to obtain and thus very desirable and very expensive. The rich and fashionable would hire one for a dinner party. It would adorn the fruit-bowl, but remain untouched, so it could be hired out gain for the next society event.

A closer view of the Dunmore Pineapple

The next stage was to grow pineapples, and gardeners in stately homes soon found themselves labouring in pineries. The first Scottish grown pineapple appeared in 1728. In the days before cheap imports, growing your own seemed reasonable, building your own was downright eccentric, but that is what the Earl of Dunmore did in 1761. He built it as a summer house where he could sit and admire his estate.

A close-up of the Dunmore Pineapple

The estate is now gone, Dunmore House is a ruin, but the National Trust saved the Pineapple. They use it as a holiday home, so all we could do was stare at it and take photographs.

We next drove back south to Helix Park where we had lunch and revisited the Kelpies, but we shall join the 2021 narrative for that

11-July-2021

Helix Park and The Kelpies

In 2003 the Falkirk Greenscape Initiative formed a plan to transform 350ha of land between Falkirk and Grangemouth into an ecopark and the centre of a network of footpaths connecting 16 local communities.

A major lottery grant enabled the park to open in 2013 and the Queen Elizabeth extension to the Forth and Clyde canal arrived a year later. In the 18th century the Forth and Clyde allowed sea-going vessels to cross the narrowest part of Scotland, saving long and dangerous voyages around the north. Over time its use declined, it fell into disrepair and closed in 1963. Rediscovered in the 1990s it was refurbished and reopened in 1999 as a leisure facility. The extension to Helix Park gave it a new starting point - the Kelpies Hub.

The Kelpies, Helix Park, Falkirk

The Kelpies, the work of sculptor Andy Scott, had been commissioned for this spot and they were installed in 2014. In Scottish folklore, kelpies are shape-shifting spirits inhabiting lakes or rivers. Usually horse-like creatures they are able to adopt human form, though often retaining their hooves.

One of the Kelpies, Helix Park, Falkirk

Scott’s 30m high kelpies are undoubtedly water spirits, but they also commemorate the horses that pulled the barges on the canals. Full of life and vigour, The Kelpies have been a popular and critical success. The park was crowded with locals on a Sunday afternoon and we were not the only visitors who had come just to see the kelpies.

The Falkirk Wheel

The best way to get from the Kelpies to the Falkirk wheel is by canal, but our time was limited so we drove the 8km from from Grangemouth to half way between Falkirk and Bonnybridge (without ever leaving the built-up area).

The Union Canal, running from Edinburgh to Falkirk, closed two years after the Forth and Clyde and was similarly restored in the 1990s. The reconnection of the two canals was a millennium project.

The Union Canal is much higher than the Forth and Clyde, a problem the original builders solved with a flight of 11 locks. Unfortunately, it took the best part of a day to make the ascent/descent which washed 3,500 tonnes of water from the Union Canal. A better solution, the restorers decided, was a boat lift, and the result is the Falkirk wheel.

The Union Canal is carried to the wheel on a new aqueduct.

A narrow boat approaches the wheel, though there is still a final lock to go through

At the wheel the boat enters a caisson which can carry up to 4 canal boats, the gates are closed...

Boats are loaded top and bottom and the wheel is ready to turn.

The wheel rotates. Boat(s) can be carried up at the same time as they are brought down. The whole process takes ten minutes and there is no net water transfer between the canals.

The Falkirk Wheel turns

If it were possible for something to be grossly over-engineered, yet elegant and simple, this would be it. It was designed to last 120 years – I hope enough boats will pass through to make building it a worthwhile investment.

Scotland 2023 (so far)

Part 1 Falkirk
Part 2 Banff and Macduff
Part 5 A Rainy Day in Dumfries (1) Robert Burns

Stirling: Scotland '22 Part 7

The Brooch that Clasps the Highlands and Lowlands Together

21-July-2022

Findochty to Stirling

Scotland

Moray

There was no rush in the morning, so when we were good and ready, we left Findochty and set out on our 170 mile journey south to Stirling. A cross-country trip would take us to the A9, not the fastest of trunk roads, and some 3½ hours later, according to Google would deliver us to our destination. But we have been up and down the A9 several times, so instead of tapping ‘recommended route,' I tapped ‘alternative route.’

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.

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.

Perhaps that's a mountain down there.
Not all the roads in the Cairngorms are twisty

Braemar

Aberdeenshire

There was no sign suggesting our route ever entered the Highlands, and when we descended south of the main massif into Braemar, we were definitely in 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.

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…

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

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.

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.

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.

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,...

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) ).

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

Alexander III, St Giles, Edinburgh
photo: Kim Traynor

When King Alexander III died in 1286 his heir was his granddaughter, Margaret, Maid of Norway (Alexander had married his daughter to King Eric III of Norway). Margaret was 3 years old and the ‘Guardians of Scotland,’ a group of senior nobles and churchmen was set up to manage the situation. Margaret set off for her new kingdom in 1290, but died en route.

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.

John Balliol
Forman Armorial, 1562

In the 1980s, comedian Ben Elton referred to one of Margaret Thatcher’s less stellar cabinet appointments as a ‘suit full of bugger-all.’ The Scots had the same idea 700 years earlier, calling King John ‘Toom Tabard’ (empty coat).

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.

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.

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.

William Wallace, Edinburgh
Photo Kim Traynor

In July 1297 he was involved in the killing of William Heselrig, probably part of a co-ordinated uprising against Edward I’s appointees. Wallace emerged as one of the leaders of this uprising, and won the easy victory at Stirling Bridge in November 1297 as described above. He then had some knightly fun raiding across Northumberland and Cumbria – though the villagers whose dwellings were burnt may have seem it a differently.

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.

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.

A contemporary map of Great Britain, Bannockburn visitor centre

Bruce, with only 5-8,000 men, was headquartered where the Memorial now stands.

The Bannockburn Memorial

Edward's men were across the battlefield to the south.

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.

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.

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…

Into the Inner Ward, Stirling Castle

…we entered an older section of the castle, though more Stuart than medieval.

In the inner ward, Stirling Castle

Inside there was a minstrel to pluck a tune on his lute to accompany our visit.

Minstrel, Stirling Castle

We admired the tapestries…

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Scotland 2022

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