Let's Talk Castles

We were in Scotland for almost two full weeks which I will remember as the most magical two weeks of my life to date. Walking through actual castles that were built by my ancestors - walking on the stone stairs that were so worn by the footsteps of the past that they dipped in the center - was the most astounding feeling.

We were able to visit four of the 2000+ that still stand in Scotland and I was not disappointed with our selection. There are so many more that I wish we would have had time to see, but they will have to wait for the next trip.

The castles we made it to were Edinburgh Castle, Stirling Castle, Dunnottar Castle, and Caerlaverock Castle. Today I want to discuss the pros and cons of each to hopefully help your own decision making process. Or just to feed your wanderlust - either works for me ;)

Edinburgh Castle:

We spent probably around 3 hours here and still didn't see absolutely everything. We didn't use the audio guide here either which likely would have taken longer.

Pros:

-Edinburgh Castle is super well preserved. It has played an important historical and political role over the years and so is very well established.

-It houses two museums, the Scottish crown jewels, and the Stone of Destiny.

-Awesome signage of what things are & their significance.

-It's huge so there's s ton to see.

-Helpful staff stationed around the entire grounds

-Beautiful views

-At the end of the royal mile and near other tourist attractions

-The castle has a super interesting history and there are signs and an audio guide that can tell you all about it.

Cons:

-So. many. people. It was so busy there that it was super slow going looking at things and there were several annoying people taking roughly a million selfies in front of the things anyone might want to look at. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for selfies. But take a few and move on!

-Not necessarily a con, but it's up a pretty steep hill which might be useful information for some.

-There are some battlements you can walk along, but there isn't a true wall walk here - again not really a con but if you're picturing walking the walls of Edinburgh Castle, you'd be disappointed.

Stirling Castle:

 We spent 2 hours here and left wishing we had 2 more! It is so magical and interesting and there is so much to see that we didn't make it to.

Pros:

-Much less busy than Edinburgh Castle

-Easy to get to (has it's own parking lot)

-Astonishing history tied to Robert the Bruce, William Wallace, and Scotland's freedom.

-Has a full wall walk which is super, super cool.

-Cemetery on site, if that's your thing.

-Really well preserved but feels less touristy

-Absolutely stunning views

-Near the Wallace Monument (which, unfortunately, we didn't make it to)

Cons:

-Doesn't have great signage, I'd recommend using the audio guide.

-Again, up a steep hill so if you're walking you might need to be aware of that.

Dunnottar Castle:

We didn't actually have the time to trek down (and then back up) into this castle. But we did get to stop and take in the stunning views! I want to live where I can see this all the time. For real.

Pros:

-Hands down one of the top 5 most stunning places I've ever seen.

-Has a neat hike into the nearby village.

-Really cool history (running theme here).

-Has it's own parking lot.

-Literally on the coast, if that's your thing.

Cons:

-Stairs. From the trail, you have to go down a ton of stairs to get to the castle (again, we didn't have time to do this).

-Not as well preserved as Edinburgh or Sterling Castles (notice the lack of roof)

Caerlaverock Castle:

We spent 2-3 hours here and loved every minute! 

Pros:

-It's a ruins so you can touch way more stuff than you can at a better preserved place.

-Has a parking lot.

-Is a unique triangle shape.

-Has a moat!

-You can climb aaaall the way up into the towers which is one of the coolest things ever.

-Not on a hill.

-Located in a lovely countryside.

-There was a literal siege on it and there's a little museum documenting the battle.

-Pretty good signage for a place that isn't as intact as others.

Cons:

-It is a ruins, so no roof and home to an uncomfortable amount of pigeons (uncomfortable for someone with a phobia of flying things, that is).

-The water around it is pretty stale and so the place doesn't smell great.

-No roof, which might be important to know on a rainy day.

Basically Europe (Scotland specifically) is super cool. It was an amazing feeling to walk through buildings that are older than my entire country! If you could go to only one castle, I'd ask what you're looking for in order to make a good recommendation. Comparing Edinburgh to Stirling, I'd choose Stirling because it offers many of the same things that Edinburgh does without the crowds (although it does not have the draw of being smack in the middle of Edinburgh). Comparing Dunnottar to Caerlaverock is a little more tricky because we were not able to actually go into Dunnottar. However, the dramatic landscape around Dunnottar has to make it the winner for me. Just by a sliver though because Caerlaverock was incredible in its own right. 

My personal favorite was Stirling Castle because it felt so castle-y (I love the wall walk!) and it's tied to a really important piece of Scottish History. It also is surrounded by great views (including the Wallace Monument) and had a distinctly different feel to it than the other castles we visited. I've always had a fascination with castles - the history, the ingenuity in their construction, the cool stone walls and heavy tapestries, etc. I've always suspected I'd like to live in a castle and visiting Stirling Castle proved that suspicion true. 

My next post will touch on Highland Games, some more minor stops of our trip, and other tourist-y things we got to do. After that, watch out for my post on our Orkney experience.

Thanks for reading!

Netti

The Route: Driving in the UK

The picture below shows our general route. We. went. everywhere. We landed on September 3rd and drove straight to our first stop and did our last tourist activity on the 24th and drove to the airport on the 25th.

That is a lot of driving. My dad was an absolute champion and managed to keep us alive though narrow roads, motorways, and round-about after round-about. I have never said the word, "left" so many times.

Renting our own car and driving ourselves to practically all of our destinations gave us a lot of freedom to choose what we wanted to do and when we wanted to do them. This means that we got to see a ton of awesome stuff! However, it also means that some days we spent more time in the car than doing awesome stuff.

Because it was our first and possibly only trip to the UK, I am really glad we chose to do a big self-drive tour because we got to do such a wide variety of things. If I were to go again, now that I know the areas of both Scotland and England that I enjoy more, I would likely choose to stay in one or two locations and do day trips instead of moving every couple of days and doing long drives.

A big part of that conclusion is that driving in the UK was stressful. Very stressful. Driving on the left wasn't the hard part. The sheer amount of people on the road had has questioning who on earth was even taking public transportation. The roads are narrow, yes. In many places and on more established roads we found this wasn't a huge issue. But in several places the road is so narrow that if two cars are approaching each other from opposite directions one has to reverse to a place they can pull to the side and let the other car pass. Also, many of these narrow roads are hedged with stone walls on either side so it's not like you can pull over anywhere and let people pass. You really have to pay attention to where pull out areas are and watch around sharp corners for oncoming traffic because there is nowhere to swerve.

This is stressful enough for an American family who is used to lovely wide roads, but then there is the added factor of speed. The rate at which we saw cars fly down those tiny little roads towards on coming traffic was astounding. How they had time to stop and allow other cars to pass safely by is beyond me. 

Another thing we had to get used to were street signs - or lack thereof. Many streets didn't have signs and it was only by the grace of God and Google Maps that we made it without getting horribly lost even once. Streets that do have signs either have them on the corner building or on short signs on the sidewalk. They are very aesthetically pleasing, super cute and fitting for the overall appearance of the streets & buildings. But they are very hard to see when driving.

Now to round-abouts. Before this trip I honestly thought that they were the coolest and most efficient traffic pattern ever. That was because I had only experienced them in American neighborhoods where the speed limit is slow and the round-abouts are one lane. There is a system to them in the UK, a good system that makes sense and likely aids in decreasing congestion. This site does a great job explaining how the system should work.

However, we found that more often than not the system was not in effect. One lane round-abouts were often turned into two very tiny lane ones by drivers who were not fans of waiting in line. The same goes for multiple lane round-abouts - several times drivers straddled the line and took up two lanes to avoid having to change multiple lanes to make their exit. It was chaos. Traffic, however, did move pretty steadily.

Parking. Parking was both awesome and insane. Because it is an old country with old roads, there is not an abundance of room for street parking. This has been altered by allowing parking anywhere there is not a double yellow line. You can park facing the wrong way on the other side of the street. You can park on the sidewalk. You can park in the teensiest place I never would have considered a parking spot if I hadn't seen those cars wedge themselves in - it is an entire nation of drivers with excellent depth perception. There were even some streets that had parking lines marked that required cars to park half on the sidewalk and half in the lane in order to fit within the lines. This meant that even though it was a two way street there was really only one lane of traffic so people had to yield to oncoming traffic by pulling tightly behind parked cars to allow other drivers to pass. Insane and awesome.

The motorways turned out to be the least stressful place to drive. Despite the speed, there were clearly marked lanes, no sharing the road with oncoming traffic, and no stone walls on either side of the road. One thing that threw us in these areas was that there is no rule regarding how close to another car you can change lanes. Here we would call it cutting people off, there it is just a normal lane change. Traffic changed lanes all the time with little notice or space. But if you stayed alert and cautious it was pretty chill.

We learned that A roads are pretty good, usually well established with marked lanes. B roads were more of a gamble. Both types of roads could change names several times over the course of their length, but their assigned A or B number stayed the same.

Overall, my recommendation depends on what you want out of your trip and if you have a confident driver in your group. My dad is an amazing driver. Truly. And he still struggled squeezing our little car through some areas. BUT his skills meant that we got to see all of Scotland and a huge chunk of England. If you are more interested in a certain area or do not have an awesome driver in your group, public transportation is a great option. The train we took from Trowbridge to Bath was easy to use and very time efficient.

The bus system everywhere we used it was less functional. There was a ton of construction and detoured routes that had not been well communicated. Even the locals that road some of the buses we were on as part of their daily commute had trouble! One man told us that he took that same bus every day and that they had moved the bus stop over night to accommodate construction and had not posted anything on their app or website so it was just by word of mouth that they found it. Crazy! The buses were fun to ride though. Watching from the front of the top deck was an education in both depth perception and right-of-way. At one point our bus squeezed in between two other buses that were each pulled over (one to the left, one to the right) on a two lane road. This left a very narrow section that was part of each lane down the middle and our bus passed through so close to the other buses that I absolutely could have stepped off of ours and on to the roofs of the other two with no trouble. Equally terrifying and amazing. Don't be afraid to ask questions, both of the people around you and the bus drivers themselves - in our experience people were very willing to help out and someone always knew the answer.

The only actual mishap we saw was on our drive from Fort William to Glasgow. We were behind a garbage truck and a tour bus coming the opposite direction took the corner too fast and too wide, The garbage truck had nowhere to go and their mirrors smacked together and the glass shattered. Both vehicles kept driving like nothing happened though which made us very curious how insurance claims work over there.

One tip I can give is to use Google Maps. Our car had a GPS built in and it was garbage. With a smart phone, you can download maps to use offline - I was able to get almost the entire country of Scotland in one map! This allows you to use Google Maps regardless if you have international data or Wi-Fi and it will save your bacon.

To sum up, driving in the UK is not for the faint of heart, nor the directionally or depth perception challenged (this is why I did not drive). It is awesome that you can cover a ton of ground in your own car. But if self-drive isn't your thing, traveling around the UK is still totally possible with public transportation and tour groups.

My next post will start to go over the actual things we did and places we saw. Stay tuned!

Thanks for reading.

Netti