While the bed was much softer and more comfortable than previous places, there was a slight angle on my bed, which made me feel as if I was mountain climbing all night. I fixed that for the next night by stuffing one of the extra blankets under the edge of the mattress, no worries. There was also lots of light coming through which made it difficult for me to get to sleep, but it wasn’t too bad.
Breakfast was pretty standard, though the mushrooms were canned and not fresh and the haggis was very dry. I guess I’m spoiled. Not everyone can cook like Jane and Hazel, I suppose, we should be happy it was yummy. It was plenty of food, regardless, and more than enough to charge us up for the day.
Today’s mission was Doune Castle and Stirling, with Inchmahome Priory if we had time left. Doune, the castle in most of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, was easy to find, and we explored up into the tower and all around. The ramparts itself were closed as unsafe, so I couldn’t stand where the French man had said ‘go away or I will taunt you a second time’! I did get a picture of the field on that side of the castle, though, which wasn’t the main entrance, but the back. The restored halls were beautifully done, and I climbed up and up and up. And then down and down and down. It had the typical narrow castle stairways, with wedge-shaped steps that narrowed to nothing near the center of the spiral.
We passed Callander and saw Hamish, the biggest Hieland Coo I had ever seen. He was a blond, with huge horns, and looked like he would damage a tank if said tank were foolish enough to try to hit him. Callander is a cute little town as well, larger and busier than Killin was, but with a great location.
Stirling was far larger, loud and bustling. We made our way up to the castle, and parked where we thought the parking overflowed to, next to a huge cemetery. M and D decided they didn’t want to climb more, so waited in the car while J and I climbed up to the castle. When we got up there, we found more parking much closer, though it cost £2. We couldn’t see the car from the ramparts there, so we went on into the castle, and was able to wave and get D’s attention, and told them there was parking up here. We waited for them to make the trek, and then toured the castle around. The chapel was beautiful, and the great hall restored to a stunning cream color. I got a picture of me on the throne in the great hall, and then took a photo for a Japanese couple together on the thrones, on their camera.
We met Cain, who was a re-enactor dressed in Black Watch garb from around 1814, the Battle of Waterloo. He kept saying his name, and it sounded like Kine, until he spelled it for me.
Another gent was dressed in 1315 garb, about the time of the Battle of Bannockburn. We sat and talked to both of them for quite a while, as I’ve made a shirt out of chain mail before, and we’ve both worn our share of armor. I can well imagine it’s much less sweltering under a gambeson and a shirt of mail in the Scotland summer than in the Florida summer.
After exploring around the castle, we all met for lunch at the café. I had a chicken curry on a potato, and J was going to have the same thing, until he saw a chunk of pineapple sticking out of mine. Oops! He’s allergic to pineapple, so that would be a no on the curry. He grabbed a sandwich instead.
We also visited the gift shop, and had a sample of Columba Crème, a mix between an Irish Crème, like Bailey’s but better, with whiskey and honey. Oh, that was wonderfully smooth and tasty. It was strong, but great. We bought a bottle, of course. Too bad it is not available in the States. Yet.
We had plenty of time to visit Inchmahome Priory, so off we went. Well, almost; we went the wrong direction, and ended up going south when we should have been going west. The GPS wouldn’t grab signal so we were at the mercy of our maps, which weren’t big enough to see the spaghetti of roads around Stirling. However, we got corrected on course and ended up on the M9 going north, and then onto the right road west.
We got to the little boat house and waited with about 15 other people for the boat across. It only held about 14 people, so he signaled the other boat to come over the Lake of Mentieth, the only Lake in Scotland, and we went on. It was only about a 10 minute trip. The island itself was very beautiful, and full sun finally granted us his full and unfettered presence. It actually got rather warm, a sensation we had all but forgotten except in front of crackling fires in cozy B&B lounges. There were lots of folks climbing the ruins, but it didn’t detract much from the peace and serenity the place imposed on us all. There was a fantastic yew tree out near the bathrooms, and we waited for the second boat back, as we wanted longer than just a half hour there. Again, this was covered with our GBHC, and they are rather clever about the admission. They wait until you’ve been taken to the island, and then get payment, so you can’t get back without it.
As we left there was a graceful swan just passing by. What a perfect symbol of the calm and beauty that surrounded the area.
On the way back through Callander, we waved to Hamish, the enormous Hieland Coo once more, as he was munching on his dinner as we passed and calmly ignoring the flocks of admirers. We stopped at the Falls of Dochart to scramble across the rocks and take some photos. The falls are a really great place, very spread out, easy to climb. There were families and folk everywhere. We saw one mom help her toddler from rock to rock, barefoot for easier traction.
Dinner plans? Well, Vic had recommended the Old Flax Mill, evidently they had some sort of Carvery dinner, so he called and made some reservations for us. We still had a couple hours till that reservation, so we decided to drive off along the A82 towards Oban and see some of the scenery we missed for the downpour on the way in. We stopped at Loch Dochart and took some photos along the way, and then explored into the mountains. I think we were halfway to Oban before we decided we should turn around and come back for our dinner reservation. Certainly we were beginning to see the landscape similar to Glen Coe forming around us once more.
The Old Flax Mill is run by Adrian and her husband, but never caught his name, perhaps Alan? This is another great place to eat, and we highly recommend it. There is a choice of the number of courses, up to three. The first is cold, homemade appetizers such as shrimp in sweet chili and cilantro, artichoke salad, salmon in sour cream sauce and honey, mussels, smoked salmon, chick pea salad, etc. Everything we tried was delicious, and you basically take a plate and take whatever you want to fill it up. There were probably at least 25 different dishes to choose from, though labels would have been helpful on some of them. What I thought was a seafood salad turned out to be potato salad, but it was great anyhow.
The next course is the main course, with a choice of several different varieties of roast. There was roast beef, Hieland Coo in whiskey sauce, lamb in honey, mint and garlic, roast chicken, and a local game dish with venison, rabbit and pheasant in a smoky bacon and red wine sauce. The Hieland Coo was a little stringier than normal beef, but that could have just been the cut. The others were all savory and spicy and delicious, truly filling.
Well, not completely filling. We had glimpsed the desserts when we were loading up our appetizer plate. There was a chocolate cake so rich it was like fudge, cranachan, tiramisu, pineapple in honey whiskey, though J passed on that one, and stewed plums in drambuie. We got all we could fit in a bowl, and my, it was simply heaven. We rolled out of there like a couple of Hieland Coos named Hamish.
Back at the B&B, and after another long climb up the stairs, we watched a Touch of Frost and then zonked out.