Places to visit in Scotland. Scotland is one of the four countries that make up the United Kingdom. England and Scotland have shared a monarch since 1603 and have been politically unified since 1707. Visiting Scotland, you may notice subtle changes – in speech and architecture, for example – almost as soon as crossing the border from England. There’s enough to be familiar, but it is recognisably different too. The bulk of the population is in the central belt, where Scotland’s largest city, Glasgow, and the capital, Edinburgh, are neighbours and rivals. To the south of the central belt, the border area is hilly – and in Dumfries and Galloway relatively mountainous. Above the central belt is the Highlands, and two national parks – Loch Lomond and the Trossachs and the Cairngorms. Visitors come to Scotland for the outdoors – though the weather can be uncertain – and for the unique culture and heritage. A colourful and often violent past means that there are plenty of castles, houses, as well as world-class museums, to see. Many of Scotland’s overseas visitors come to experience the land their ancestors came from.
It’s hard to forget your first sight of Linlithgow Palace. Off the merkat, up cobbled Kirkgate, past St Michael’s, through the impressive outer gateway – and the palace fills your vision. It is massive, literally awesome, so obviously a ruinous shell – and yet there’s a niggling hint of what it once was, or might […]
Linlithgow – Scotland’s Royal Pleasure Palace Read More »
Glasgow has its very own City of the Dead, a monumental testimonial to the Victorian age on a hill beyond the Cathedral of St Mungo. It is an astonishing cemetery, a 37 acre site containing the remains of some 50,000 souls. Of course, the great unwashed majority lie in pitiable obscurity, but there are about
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Sooner or later, the curious traveller will end up at Rosslyn. Not far from Edinburgh, it is a magnet for mystics, myth-lovers, madmen, movie-goers and the mildly interested. It has been claimed that the chapel was built by the Knights Templar, on the site of a temple of Mithras, and modelled on Solomon’s Temple in
We thought we should go to the Cradle of Christianity in Scotland; the place where St Ninian, Scotland’s first Christian missionary, landed in 397AD and showed the pagan Picts The Way. There is a chapel there, near the Saint’s alleged landing place on the Isle of Whithorn, at the south-east corner of the Machars Peninsula
St Ninian’s Chapel Read More »
Splice the mainbrace and look out for the roaring forties. Berthed by the Riverside Museum in Glasgow, in the former Queen’s Dock, is the SV (sailing vessel) Glenlee. Known locally simply as “The Tall Ship”, this is one of the last steel-hulled bulk cargo carriers around, one of only 5 Clyde-built sailing ships still afloat
Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum comes under the heading, ‘Not to be missed in Glasgow’. A Spitfire rubs shoulders (or undercarriage/trunk) with Sir Roger the elephant; there’s a stuffed eagle (and other animals), lumps of rock (aka ‘geology’), ancient Egyptian coffins, suits of armour, guns, Charles Rennie Mackintosh bits, fearsome dinosaurs – and loads and
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Edinburgh is a very photogenic city, the kind of place where it might once have been nice to buy a post card for a close friend or relative. People hardly ever send post cards anymore. (This should be said somewhat whimsically.) People hardly ever send post cards anymore; instead, they take a quick picture on
A postcard from Calton Hill Read More »
These are the remains of Sweetheart Abbey, founded by Dervogilla Balliol. Here’s devotion for you. When her husband, John Balliol, died in 1268, Lady Dervorgilla had his heart removed, embalmed and placed in an ivory casket which she carried with her for the rest of her days. Apparently, it sat there at mealtimes, her ‘sweet
Dervorgilla’s Sweetheart Read More »
Here is a fortress on the edge. Caerlaverock is a mighty Scottish stronghold on the banks of the Solway Firth, in the border battleground of the two old protagonists, Scotland and England, and which finally came to grief in the civil war of the 17th century. On first seeing a picture of this most photogenic
Caerlaverock Castle Read More »
We all know what a national park is. Although definitions vary, they are usually rural areas of natural (or naturalised) beauty designated as ‘special’ in some way by their national governments. Normally, the environment within a national park, including its flora and fauna, are protected and there are particular rules about what you can, and
Britain’s National Parks Read More »
Threave Castle was the stronghold of the Black Douglases and built by the 3rd Earl, Archibald the Grim. If that isn’t romantic enough for you, it stands on an island in the middle of the River Dee and, unless you think you can navigate your way safely across an ancient underwater causeway, the only way
Scotland is a nation within a state, one of the four countries that make up the United Kingdom. It retains its own unique identity, has its own parliament and its own laws. So it’s not surprising that it looks and feels different to its more populous neighbour, England, to the south. Familiar enough to be
A bit about Scotland Read More »
Scotland manages to create itself – with a little help from the King of England In the 9th century, Kenneth MacAlpin (Cionnaith mac Ailpin) merged Dalriada or Dál Riata, the Kingdom of the Scoti, with the Kingdom of the Picts. The new kingdom, known as Alba, would eventually become Scotland and Kenneth MacAlpin is traditionally
How Scotland was born Read More »
