Days 9 and 10 in the middle of the Scottish boonies...

Monday, July 15, 2013

Day 9:   A Tale of Two Castles...

It’s not often I wake up late.  I remember Jess waking up and thinking I need to get up soon.  I rolled over and drifted off to sleep again.  At 9:15, she woke me and the baby up.  I hopped in the shower to get myself together and then packed the car while they said goodbye to the animals.  We had a nice chat with Alan and Kate and then got on the road about an hour or so later than we had planned.

We headed to our first destination Glamis.  Apparently on their website Jess missed the fact that there was a car-stravaganza.  The wondrous world of British motor vehicles.  We were rerouted to a different entrance.  This was an independent site and we were not allowed to take pictures inside the castle. There were tons of busses or in other words, hoardes of annoying Europeans from one country roaming the place at a time.  This is only a problem when it is Spaniards or Italians.  Otherwise, the worst are the Japanese.  They get in all your pictures and swarm you and anywhere you are walking like gnats.  We got there and were told that you had to take the obligatory tour and the next was at 12:45, thus throwing us off our plan.  12:45 - WTF isn't that tea time?  

We went and got him his lunch since we had a good 20 minutes before the tour started.  This place was the home of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.  To make the tour extra authentic, the guide was from outside Rochester, NY and there was someone from Southampton on the tour (she was fucking snobby).  She announced that she was from Southampton and I said to Jess, “So what, we from Bay Shore, what up?”  

The woman from Rochester started off as a real know it all but I have to give her props, I think she did a really good job of making it interesting and keeping people engaged.  The baby was good until he decided to throw his cars on the nice wood floors and not on the stone ones that he had done previously.  When he was a little restless some middle aged couple or other would flirt with him and that kept him happy.  

And yes, he shit whilst in the castle.

We got back on the road and headed to Dunnottar.  It was one of the spots I was waiting to see.  En route, we pulled up behind some car and Jess was like, “Is that a dog?”  and there was an odd shaped head in the back of the car.  I said, “Nah, it’s someone with really bad frizzy hair.”  As it turned out, we were both wrong.  It was a dog with really bad frizzy hair.

Back to the castle.  If ever there was a spot to build a castle, this was it.  I think the pictures will speak for themselves.  It’s basically on this outcropping into the sea with little room to place an army around it to seize it.  The stairs down were a killer and I offered to walk him back up but Jess wanted her exercise. 

Pooping at Dunnottar.

While walking around, he found a black rubber ball as a size 1 soccer ball.  Jess decided he was not going to play with the ball.  I went to explore and then we were going to do the switch since he was slightly uncooperative.  This is what I saw from up top:

Ok – so now we’re not going to let him keep it.  The hoarder carried this fucking ball around with him the entire walk through the castle grounds.    Needless to say, it’s two days later and we still have the friggin’ ball.  We walked all over the grounds, it was beautiful and huge.  We spent a good two hours inside.  On the last of the places to see, he decided to hit on a little redheaded girl, giving her some grass. He knows how to pick up the chicks.

Before we left, Jess made one last attempt to give back the hoarders ball and asked the girls who worked there if it belonged to someone.  They said that the ball belonged to no one and they fished it out of the cistern earlier that day.  Because Glamis took so long, we missed Drum Castle but hope to squeeze it in the next day.

Drove to the new place, which really is in the middle of fucking nowhere. I’m talking Deliverance kind of isolation.  It’s bad enough when you’re in the middle of bumblefuck NY or Iowa or some backass state in the US, it’s crazier when it’s in another country.

The farm is beautiful and it is owned by a woman named, Catherine Imhof-Cardinal and her husband, Paddy.  She is an artist and has actually had a book written about her works and life.  Pretty cool – even cooler is that she was born at Versailles – yes, Versailles the palace and not just some town close to it.  In Versailles!  Again, she and her family were very down to Earth - great people.  I wish we had spent a little more time there to talk with them and explore the property and the area.

The family gave us a bunch of toys for baby Neil to play with while we stayed and he was VERY happy with their choices:

We went back out and went to Asda – a store owned by the slave driving, non-unionist, Wal-mart chain.

America is everywhere.    Check out the beer I found:

We got back and Jess cooked dinner while we went to take a walk.  The walk was going well until he spotted this:

and it was full of sand!!! Bonus!

We had dinner and got ready for the next day as he is in the room with us again which means we need to be real quiet in our double bed.  This building we are in (one of many on the farm) is really more like a studio apartment with just a curtain separating us from the hoarder.  Unfortunately, while Jess and the baby were in the shower, I flushed and froze the two of them.  Luckily, I got this shot of the farm across the road - it looks like Africa.

Day 10:  How many can she stuff in it?

I should have never spoken about the showers.  The shower in this place was the only drawback, it blew.  It started pulling the scalding hot, ice cold routine.  The pressure sucked too.  I could barely get the shampoo out of my hair.  I had to use the shower head to push the shampoo out of my hair.  I don't even think my armpit hair got wet.  I really love when you try to soap up and it's like sliding soap across a table - totally dry and it barely moves.

The bummer about The National Trust is you can’t take pictures inside any of their places because of preservation.  I get it – but I also know that I am not one of those assholes who use their flash on every picture they take.  I can work the camera manually – maybe not well, Jess would say, but I think that I do ok.

Baby Neil had this egg for breakfast - directly from the hen house across the street - it was like an hour old when Catherine plucked it out of there.

We headed to Drum since we missed it yesterday.  At this point, we saw so many, I don’t remember the inside of this one.  I think I liked it but I honestly can’t remember.  We went and checked out the walled gardens which were very nice.  They were broken up into sections based on the centuries and the gardens made to look like what they would have looked like then.

Next we headed to Fraser Castle which Jess threw on here because of that stupid Outlander book.  It was pretty cool on the outside – I think the inside was ok, again, I don’t remember.  He had a great time in the gift shop with the girl who was working.  Pulling everything off the shelves and basically charming the pants off of her.

Next was Craigievar Castle.  It was just what the castle would have been (the tower house) before they added anything to it, so it was the most authentic.  Again, we had to take the obligatory tour.  We needed to get through there quick so that we could get on the last one of the day, Crathes.  The girl told us that the last entrance was 4:45.  We get in with the tour and had the

slowest...

speaking….

guide in……

the……

entire…..

National…….

Trust

Organ…..

i….

zation…..

It was so boring, that the baby started to yell and make all sorts of noise.  He eventually threw one of his cars.  I couldn’t tell if the guys stopped to scowl or if it was just one of his regularly long pauses between words.  We took that as our clue to beat it out of there – though we both wish we had stayed to see what the castle and its many decorations would have looked like.  We were on our way to Crathes and it’s 4:45 last call.

We made it to the grounds on time and got to the ticket room only to be told that the last entrance was 4 pm.  Jess tried to work her way around it and it didn’t work.  She wasn’t very nice to the woman as a result.

So we headed over to see the castle’s outside and the baby goes and takes this kids soccer ball and starts playing with it.  I guess he made a new friend because he and Leith, who was probably around seven kicked the ball around for a good 15 minutes.  It was really quite cute.  Leith was very European though, and had no shame running around in his speedo with a t-shirt and no trousers.

After Leith went to play football with his brother and uncles (I think) baby Neil decided that he would go and take a peek and see what was in these people’s cooler.

It was the funniest thing we had seen in quite some time.  He was pulling it away and probably moved it a good two to three feet before they realized that he was even doing it.  Jess was crying and Leith’s aunt was laughing.  We’re not sure what the hell the people were thinking.

Some son, he didn't even bring me back a beer!

We got back to the bothy and spoke with both Gaetan and Paddy.  I can’t reiterate enough how it really is cool to speak with other people and just see and hear things from a different perspective.  They are both good guys, down to earth.  Turns out that the trees that they farm are hazelnut trees.  I played soccer with Zack and Aubepine and baby Neil.

We ate dinner, then went out on the trampoline, hammock and walked around a bit. We came back in got ready to hit the sack.  Jess did some reading and I blogged.

Just another evening in the Scottish countryside.