Loch Ness, castles, forts, and soldiers

Well, now, I know that at the end of my last post I had a very intriguing bit of foreshadowing: I said I was in Inverness, which meant that I'd be soon visiting Loch Ness, with all the exciting implications of monster hunting and cryptozoology inherent therein.

Well, we DID visit Loch Ness. No Nessie, though, unless you count it's depictions upon hundreds of cheap tourist souvenirs.

(My personal favourites were the little four piece statues, comprised of two loops of the body, a tail and a head that you line up in a row to depict Nessie in the water on your desk, and the "Sexy-Ness" and "Drunken-Ness" t-shirts with dressed up Nessies. I didn't buy any of them, but I giggled a bit.)

I quite liked the small bit of Inverness that we saw. Our hostel was conveniently located one block over from the bus station, and two blocks down from the trains. We used the bus station quite a bit. Also, I loved the atmosphere in the Victorian Market. I shall post photos demonstrating why next week.

We visited Loch Ness not for the monster exhibition but for the ruins of Urquhart castle... Because we poor North Americans have a wonderful fascination with such things, having as we do a terrible paucity of picturesque crumbling ruins in the New World. We seem to trip over them everywhere here, but that hasn't dimmed my enthusiasm for them - or for photographing them.

We visited the castle on the shores of the famous loch in the afternoon. That morning, though we visited a completely different sort of structure: Fort George. It's an extremely well preserved military fort from the 18th century. It's so well preserved, in fact, that in addition to being a museum (I'm told they also have costumed historical interpreters in July and August!) it's also a functioning, modern military fort. We saw some pretty fine examples of modern-day members of the Scottish Highlander regiment stationed there. :) They also had a very neat regimental museum, full of artefacts. Highlights include silver-plated sheep skulls decorated with regimental symbols, a mechanical arm used by one of the soldiers ofthe regiment after he lost a limb in the First World War (fully articulated elbow, hooked ring and pinkie fingers for holding things, and moveable first two fingers), and, of course, a small metal cigarette case with a large dent and a bullet beside it. You know the story: the soldier has the case in his breast pocket, and his life is saved when the bullet that would have otherwise killed him ends up hitting the case of cigarettes instead of his heart. The accompanying label said that the man died in a completely different battle soon after, though. Ah, well. 

The day after we visited Fort George and Loch Ness, we took the bus to Culloden Moor, a really well-designed museum dedicated to the battle that took place there in 1745 (the past battle to take place on British soil). I love soundscaprs, you see, and they got on my good side immediately by having a man in 18th century military costume greet us at the door by tipping his hat to us and allowing us womenfolk to hold his rifle (not innuendo, guys, I mean his reproduction bayonet). I love historical interpreters! :) 

There was also a little four-walled room that played a video on all four walls, which was a short reenactment of the battle. It makes you feal a hint of the confusion and terror of it.

Afterwards, we wandered about the fields were the battle was actually fought. They have flags put out showing the approximate locations of the Jacobite (AKA the supporters of Bonnie Prince Charlie) and government troops. There are also cairns and gravemarkers that point out the locations were each clan's men were burried if they didn't survive the battle. I had a shivery moment when it struck me that the entire field was really one mass grave. 

(But really, aren't huge swathes of Europe?)

Anyway, speaking of death and such, the next post will detail  our experiences in Edinburgh, which include ghost tours, exploring underground vaults, amd hearing about Mary King's Close and other nastiness.

I should also mention that it was in Inverness that Sara and I finally met up with two wayward members of our group: Erin and Kelsey! They'd seen Chad off onto a bus to Cork, where he flew home direct to Edmonton last week. We for had a happy reunion. :) 

Ghosties and Ghoulies, New and Old Town

Huzzah! So our hostel here in Berwick-Upon-Tweed (possibly one of the cutest names for a town I've run across so far) has a laptop with internet access for free use for the hostel guests... which means I have an actual keyboard (and not just my little iPod touch screen, with its small "keys", which, combined with my large-ish fingers, means that I am prone to typos), and so I can therefore type at about three or four times the speed! And there is much rejoicing!

So I've entered England. Well, very northern North England, but England nonetheless! Now, I'll tell you about our experience in Edinburgh.

I really, really like Edinburgh. We stayed in the Old Town, as opposed to the New Town, which was built in the mid-1700s... although ironically, the Old Town is mostly comprised of buildings that are newer than those in the New Town, as the slums were cleared during the Victorian era, and the run-town tenements renovated, demolished and/or rebuilt. More on that later.

There are very few buildings that were built after the Industrial Revolution in the area where we visited, so it gave the city an older feel. One of the few buildings that are modern mostrocities is actually the Scottish Parliament building. It's very, uh... interesting? The outside is covered in these weird black shapes which kind of look like handguns or hairdryers, but are actually meant to represent curtains being drawn aside - like, the government offices are transparent so anybody can see in, so no secrets? Um, yeah. Most people think that it looks silly.

We went on several tours with the Mercot Tours company. The first one we did was the Ghosts and Ghouls Tour, which began at 8:00 or so in the evening. Our cloaked guide, Liz, was a brilliant orator, and really good at creating atmosphere in subtle ways. I noticed that she would angle her face so she would be staring out at you through one eye, which made her look a bit off, and she would speak softly at times, so you would lean in (of course, just in time for her to let out an aweful shriek as someone in her story discovered that yes, ghosts DO exist, etc.).

The great thing about Edinburgh is that there are a LOT of ghost stories to work with. I would seriously reccommend you all look up the story Mary King's Close and the plague victims, um, shut up in there... and the ghostly activity found there afterwards.

One of the things that I really loved about Edinburgh were the "closes": essentially, small tunnels, too narrow to be really called streets, that go between houses. I'll post pictures of them when I get back. They're nice now, of course, but back in the 18th and 19th centuries, especially, these steep little paths would be running with what the locals would call "nastiness" - night soil, the contents of chamber pots, logs and lemonade, whatever you want to call it. Apparently, under the "Nastiness Act", one could no longer pitch the contents of ones' buckets out of the window during the day, and when one did do so at night, one had to shout a warning in French. I think it was something like "Gardez l'eau" - "careful of the water!" - which got shortened to the Edinburgh slang "Gardy-loo!"

Of course, a side effect of this law was that the poor people of the city, especially the literally poor, had chamber pots festering with their "nastiness" all day, which can't have been hygenic. :P

We went down into the "vaults" in our tour. Now, the vaults were created in the 18th century when a series of massive bridges were built that spanned one of the valleys of the city. They each had nineteen massive arches. One of the most prestigeous areas of the city to live in were right on top of the bridges... so, by extension of that idea, living right NEXT to the bridges would also be prestigious... and, essentially, the arches were walled up by buildings. You can only tell from a few select places that there's a bridge there at all, now, because it doesn't look like a valley anymore, but a flat city. But the spaces underneathe the arches still existed, and, the city being pressed for spaces... they were subdivided into little places that the owners of the land (the buildings above) could rent... little dark caves. Anyway, I'll post a picture of the postcard I bought, showing the cross-section of the vaults so that that explanation I just wrote makes sense.

Anyway, it's said (by the BBC no less!) to be on of the most haunted and terrifying places in Britain. I didn't feel anything while down there (except a bit chilled), but then again, I may have been protected by my three talismans: I was wearing my favourite scarf, which has a lot of good emotions attached to it, I had the earrings my good friend Yan gave me in my ears (also positive feelings), and I had a little flashlight on a caribiner clicked onto one of my beltloops.

Erin, who is sensitive to such things, says that she saw the Watcher, one of the ghosts, a big, burly, territorial man, was standing behind me for a bit, arms crossed and glaring. I'm glad that she didn't tell me until afterwards! D:

Also, we had complimentary drinks afterwards, up top in the little tavern they have. I had the lager.

In any case, although I personally didn't see or feel anything supernatural, I was still impressed with our tour guide, who was very good at spinning ghost tales. I nearly cried just thinking about the plaghe victims of Mary King's Close.

Today, after Sara had departed to visit her family in Newcastle, Erin, Kelsey and I went on two more, history-centric, Mercat tours: Secrets of the Royal Mile and another one whose name escapes me that took us down into the vaults (which are way less scary during the day, when more electric lights are lit, and there are fewer candles providing sole lighting). There were very few repeated stories, actually. During the two day tours today we learned a lot more about the social history of things, symbolism in the archetecture, etc. Very cool.

We also got to go into the Law Courts (to see the 16th century building beneath the 19th century facade). It's a working building, and we could see the lawyers at work. Where we were, they were wearing their black robes... and wigs! (I didn't know that they still did that.) They were "promenading", apparently a Scottish-only law practice. Apparently when lawyers wish to discuss a case, they don't sit in one place to talk about it: they walk, back and forth, along the hallway. That way, no-one can overhear their whole aconversation, just bits and pieces, if that. Clever!

Anyway, that's enough for now... I'm certain I'll have a lot more to say about Edinburgh in my picture posts! :) Tata for now!