Battlefields, Cathedrals and Palaces

Praise God, the driving is getting easier, and I may actually begin to enjoy it the next time I try it. Today I drove to Culloden Battlefield (O.K., so it’s only a few miles from where we were staying) and managed to navigate all the round-abouts. What an impressive place. The interactive center leads you through the year prior to the battle, highlighting the main commanders involved, and the divided sympathies of the people via some very high tech interactive gadgets.

The visitor gets the perspective of the British on the left side of the exibit, and the Highlanders on the right, and follows the developments leading up to the fateful battle that occurred on April 16, 1746. The battle itself lasted less than an hour, but within the first three minutes, 700 Highlanders lay dead on the cold, wet moore, while the English army lost only 50, with 250 wounded. The Duke of Cumberland, wanting to make sure such a rebellion never happened again, sent troops all through Scotland to burn the cottages and dwellings, frequently shooting Highlanders regardless of their sympathies and turning women and children out of their homes to starve. He was nicknamed The Butcher. All in all, a very sobering experience.

The technical gadget used to walk the battle field was something I had never seen before. A device that looks like a smart phone, but was a satellite receiver. All over the field were places that triggered the device to play an audio explaining the particular place you are standing in, and what happened in the battle at that place. Diagrams showed on the screen in explanation as well as pictures of key people in the battle. What an amazing technological device!

After walking the battlefield, we came in and had lunch at the wonderful cafeteria in the visitors center. If I could only say one thing about the food here, it is that it is hot. Everything that is supposed to be served as a hot meal, is, well…hot. This may sound redundant, but I’m certain that Americans don’t quite meet this standard. We tend to serve things warm, not hot, for fear of someone getting burned and thus are open for a lawsuit. Here, the food is served in a way that gives new meaning to the term, “piping hot” and it is really amazing. Don’t get me wrong either—I prefer it this way, especially since the weather is always damp, chilly and rainy.

Our next stop was the Clava Cairns. This is a set of three circles of standing stones. For those of you who have read Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series, I did not hear the stones scream at me, which was something of a disappointment. Maybe I should come back on All Hallows Eve and try again.

There are three separate cairns here, two for holding the souls of the dead until the continue on their way in the afterlife, and one for cremating the bodies. They also served as a giant sundial and calendar for the people who lived 3500 years ago.

On this site there is a fourth rudimentary stone ring which gives the appearance of an attempt to create something like the other rings, though it doesn’t meet the mark. This ring it was found, was an attempt to create a ring like the others, 1000 years later. They scientists know the time period from studying peat samples below the surface of the earth. These peat samples indicate that there was a period of seven years where this part of the earth was covered in darkness, and nothing grew and many things died. The event that caused this was the eruption of a volcano, that permanently cooled this region, as it had been a warm and temperate climate prior to the eruption. When the sun finally was able to show through the ash cloud, we had entered into the bronze age, where the inhabitants didn’t quite have the knack for creating the stone monoliths from a thousand years prior.

From Clava Cairns we went to Elgin Cathedral. This was built in 1224, and served the people and the Bishops until the Reformation in 1560, when it took rather a bad beating. The lead was ordered stripped from the roof, and time began to take its toll, eroding away at the structure.

After Elgin Cathedral, we drove to Spynie Palace. Spynie Palace is a Bishops Palace, built in the late 12th century, and while the Bishops cathedral was moved to Elgin Cathedral, the Bishops continued to reside at Spynie. The landscape has changed considerably around the Palace, as there was a sea loch that ran behind the north wall that is no longer there, having filled with silt and becoming solid land.

Photo below is the Kitchens

From the Palace we drove to the local golf course where across the street there was a herd of Highland Cattle of which we took pictures. Strange, I know, but the things fascinate me with their long shaggy hair.Thus ended our day. Since I post this late, I will say, yesterday we crashed a formal tour of which I will tell more about in the next post. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day here.