Tales of Home [3]

My advice to you would be, if you consider it socially/legally unacceptable in your homeland, it is probably acceptable/encouraged by Scotshobbitlaw/custom.

Well, it's what I was told in "Polar Bear interesting information" class.
(Taught at all norwegian schools.)

We'll have to ask Petty for an expert opinion I guess.  

que?

Who are you 'que'ing at?

life.

Fair enough.

My professional opinion is if I have my kilt over my head you can do as you damn well please with your own (this counts even when there arent any polar bears about) as I cant see you anyway. And Ill be drinking.

Went for a walk with some old friends today to Castle Lachlan (or whats left of it) took quite a few pics so going to post them in bunches- heres the first few- on the way to the castle, beautiful Autumn day too- (the best address in Scotland belongs to the Laird of the current Lachlan castle, who is Head of the Clan Mcloughlan and is called Lachlan himself, making his address, Lachlan Macloughlan Chief of Clan Mcloughlan of Castle Lachlan, Strathlochlan- try saying that after a few buckies!)

There's the destination. Part of it is under scaffolding now, which is a shame-



The scenery was stunning, and the colours beautiful-









This is the view out from the bit of headland the castle sits on, looking over Loch Fyne-



And approaching the castle itself. It was destroyed by the English navy who sat just off the coast and out of range, and with their superior cannons blew large chunks of it to bits.



Next up- inside the castle!

I expect to see the head of a French knight poke over the top and shout "I fart in your general direction!"

Well, there's a reason they say the west coast of Scotland is one of the prettiest places in the world.  

One of these days I will get out to our local castle ruins. Once the abode of some famous people!!

  yay castles!!!

one day I am going to visit Neuschwanstein castle in Bavaria

Right part two- Lachlan Castle- whats left of it-

A little bit of background first- it dates from the 13th century and was the stronghold of Clan Maclaughlin.
The keep part of it dates from the 15the Century however.

The entrance to the keep-



The most striking feature when you enter is the huge fireplace at the far end, it has no chimney and as there were originally three floors above your head, as you stand here, it must have got pretty smoky at times!



Sadly two of the three rooms on the lefthand side are now locked off for safety reasons.
I have been in them in the past and its a shame you cant access them now, as not only do the windows there overlook the Loch but they have really amazing round windows.
However the one room you can get into has a large box window with a stone seat and alcove to one side, overlooking the entrance.
You can also see a part of the superb stone masonry that went into the roof design-



There were three floors above the ground one, you can see some of the floor supports still jutting out from the walls.
The second floor was the Main Hall and the Council Chamber for the Clan, with access through a staircase built into the wall next to the fireplace that went from ground floor to roof- its walled up now-



The windows on the second floor (it can be accessed another way now up the rubble heap thats now part of the hill where the other side of the castle was destroyed from sea) are your traditional castle slit windows-




These two doorways led out from the Main Hall on the second floor through to the private chambers at the other end of the castle-



The castle was destroyed in the aftermath of the failed Jacobite revolution of 1745. Following the disastrous defeat at Culloden the castle was bombarded from sea on the orders of the Duke of Cumberland.

This place symbolises a potent moment in Scotlands history. Its a full stop in history set in stone.

The Jacobite Rebellion and Culloden in particular tends to be wrongly categorised as just another battle between Scots and English- but it wasn't.
It was as much a civil war and a political and above all a religious war as it was anything else.
It was clan against clan, with old friendships and old grudges coming back to the fore, and it was Catholic against Protestant, and it was about who you 'owed' loyalty to and it was a war of ideas.

I think the way it went was for the best, I am glad Scotland didnt fall under the control of the medieval Catholic Church, I doubt there would have been a Scottish Enlightenment if it had, and the world would have had to wait a while longer for its industrial revolution.
But its scars still run down through Scottish life too, even today.
The Old Firm, Celtic and Rangers, for example are just Culloden for the football field.



(lyrics in the description)

Some pretty pictures from my neck of the woods fjords. (Borrowed, not my photos.)

Ooh, those are very pretty Amarïe.

Though they do say us from the less weatherbeaten part of Fjordlandia do have a certain fascination for your weatherbeaten part of the country that you locals might not completely share.

aw lovely ^^

Those are some really neat pictures, Petty! I would love to visit a castle one day. I like your posts about Scottish history too. I never knew the extent of the Catholic/Protestant divide in Scotland (or at least in the west of the country) before reading your posts about them. I listened to the Deanta song too, it was quite nice.

Yes, I was going to say Petty. Nice tie in with the history of things.

It wouldn't surprise me if a large proportion of the poeple on the Royal Navy ship were scotish either. A large part of the british navy in those days being made up of Scots and Irishmen. And although speking gaelic where outlawed it was in reality quite often a common language spoken between the scottish and the irish in the navy.

Just goes on to show that inner divide even further I guess.

Final part of the pics from my day out with friends.

After the castle we spent some time on the beach (buckie break) next to it-





From there we followed the river back to the main road-



And headed to a little village called Newton on the shores of Loch Fyne- once upoon  time it was a small fishing community- now you will be lucky to hear a Scottish accent there as it all been bought up by rich English folk-



But its easy to see why they wanted to live there, given the view from your front door-



We were making for a very small island that is connected to the mainland by a land bridge at low tide and is cut off at high tide-





In the summer its a seal haven and you also get a lot of basking sharks around it, but sadly not today.
And the weather was taking a turn and starting to close in and we were losing the sunlight-



So we headed back through a small wood full of Autumn colours-



And little streams-




And that was that- off home to warm up the feet and get some more buckie in

Love those castle pics, Petty And a really interesting piece of history, it reminds you that those castles weren't always old piles of stone turned tourist attractions.

Picture of the last day of the sun visible over the horizon from our northernmost county Finnmark

Stunning.  

Well, it's the last they'll be seeing of it for a while. So it's probably a good thing it is.   Stunning that is.

bye dear sun...

Hey Norc - do you get sunless days? If not, what's the shortest period of sunlight?