As all good stories should go, I have saved the best for last!

Our day in Stirling was my absolute favorite, and I firmly believe the entire family enjoyed it about as much as I did. It was the perfect Scottish holiday kind of day. As in, we even saw men in kilts playing bagpipes. It was the cherry on the top of our UK holiday sundae.

I’m not trying to be all sunshine and rainbows, glossing over the struggles. This was truly one of those rare, extra joy and excitement kind of days that you cannot plan for. Days like this just happen, and you have to enjoy them when they come.

I’m not even sure which thing we did that day was the coolest. We did four things, and they were all pure joy.

I’m not even exaggerating. So let’s just begin at the beginning.

I’d booked our Stirling Castle tickets in advance. You can do that here. They have a family discount package, which is a good thing since every single place we went required five tickets, but all of these U.K. historical sites have family deals on their tickets.

After our nice Holiday Inn Scottish breakfast, we all piled into our rented SUV and drove towards the castle. We noticed a sign about Stirling Bridge and decided to take a short side quest to check that out. It was the site of a major Scottish battle about a thousand years ago.

The weather was even perfect, though only for that short time.

It was pre-storm weather, which I personally adore. The temperature is low and the clouds are so thick and full and gray they are almost blue. The wind is whipping, humidity is about 99%, and the entire Earth tells you, “Look, you got three minutes before everything is soaked.”

But even with all this warning, it feels so exhilarating outside in that cool, windiness that you just dare it to give you five more minutes to enjoy being outside in July in blue jeans with no sweating!

We frolicked about the Stirling Bridge, took a few photos, and dashed back to the car as the first drops of rain began.

But the real fun began when we arrived to the castle gates, paid for parking, and met the jolliest person we’d met yet in the U.K., a smiling, bearded Scottish gatekeeper who seemed genuinely happy to meet us. Up to this point, no one in England or Scotland seemed at all interested in meeting us. No one had asked us where we were from. This was a delightful change.

The man at the gate thought it was hilarious that we were the third car that morning with Americans from Virginia, and he’s right. That is pretty bizarre. What’s the deal, Virginia?

It kept only threatening to rain and dropping a few drops. Only Alan and Daniel had rain jackets, and we had only one umbrella. The rain held off another few minutes as we entered the castle grounds. At the gates, we met another friendly Scottish man. He asked us where we were from and what all we would see in Scotland.

We told him we were just seeing Stirling and Dumphries. He was like, “Dumphries!!??”

Laughing, he asked, “Why would you go to Dumphries? I mean I have family in Dumphries, but what’s in Dumphries?”

So I had to explain there was one castle there we would visit. Plus, it was just on our way back south. I was giving us a jump on our road trip to Heathrow Airport. The funny thing is that we heard this several times that day, “Dumphries!? Why are ye going to Dumphries!?”

This man was another jolly Scot with a red beard. Daniel was already loving this place. There were red-headed people everywhere. Plus, Daniel has always had an appreciation for a rainy day. I have many photos of him standing outside in the rain, for fun.

And Scotland did not disappoint on the rain. As soon as we entered the castle walls, the rain came pouring down.

We were still outside, so we hid under a stone archway and did our best to stay dry until it passed. Alan ran back to the car and fetched an umbrella.

The pouring rain slowed to a mist, and we walked about the castle gardens. It was the prettiest garden I’ve seen in ages, so I took a lot of photos.

Once Alan rejoined us, and the rain stopped, we walked along castle walls and explored all of the outer buildings of the castle, like the kitchens.

You know how we love to walk on ancient walls!

First of all, look at these gorgeous views of Scottish nature!

One thing Stirling Castle is famous for is being where the Highlands meet the Lowlands. You can see the hills of the Scottish Highlands in these photos, and it’s beautiful.

Then we finally made it into the castle itself, and I have photos to share with you from that too.

We spent just as much time outside as in because it was so nice there!!

The people we met were what made our Scottish experience a notch above our English experience, in my opinion.

The Scots were far more interested in talking to us. They made us feel welcome. I’ve said several times, the Scottish remind me of American Southerners.

Southern hospitality must have come from Scotland!!

Hear me out. This makes sense. Many, many of the people who settled the South were of Scottish ancestry, my own ancestry included. Did you see Gone with the Wind? Mr. O’Hara was Scottish too. I mean sure he was fictional, but still!

This man was in full costume as some kind of artisan I think. I can’t remember what he was supposed to be. What made him special is he took the time to talk to our kids. He asked them where they are from, what all we were visiting in Scotland. Then he took us to the window, and told us more about Scotland, the Highlands, and things to look for. He was friendly and helpful and also funny.

This tour guide asked the boys, “Where are you from?” And the boys had the hardest time understanding him enough to answer his questions. It was so funny. He was a great sport about it. Then he was another one to say, “Dumphries!? Why are you going to Dumphries!?”

According to the Stirling Castle website, from 1110-1603, almost every Scottish monarch either lived, died, or was crowned at Stirling Castle.

The place is so huge, we did not even see all of it. I believe we missed both the chapel and the Highlanders Museum, but we saw about all the rest.

This was the day it finally occurred to me that I could bribe my family to smile for photos. Inside the castle, I told them, “Hey! If you all smile for this photo, I’ll let you get a coke with lunch!” Boom. Problem solved, and I was only out a few pounds for cokes.

Another cool feature of the castle is these elaborately woven unicorn tapestries, hanging in the Queen’s bedchamber. These were made in modern times off patterns of medieval tapestries.

After touring the main areas of the castle, we made our way to the cafe and the gift shops.

I was a big fan of the Stirling Castle Cafe. They had a plethora of baked goods to choose from, and best of all, they had gluten free bread! We were all excited about the bakery selection!!

While we were in the gift shop, the bottom fell out of the skies! Everything and everyone was drenched.

We decided to we were happy with what we’d already seen and headed for our nice, dry SUV. Not far from the castle is the site of the Battle of Bannockburn, and we wanted to go see that too.

The Battle of Bannockburn site

When we saw the men with bagpipes, we all thought, “Ohhh yes! This is excellent!”

No one wants to visit Scotland and not see a man in a kilt playing a bagpipe! It’s such a unique trademark of the Scottish! We only had one whole day in Scotland, so this was a gift.

We headed into the visitor’s center. You need to tickets to get in.

It is not expensive. The whole family is only $25.00. There’s a full Battle of Bannockburn experience film, which we missed because we got distracted by the festivities of the day. Then there’s the park and memorials.

The thing the boys had the most fun with though, was the costume room!

We tried on everything they had in there, and they had a lot! The quality of the costumes was unlike anything you will find anywhere else! The gear was made of fine materials, and we’ve never come across anywhere like this in America.

Just as we were finishing up in the costume room, a Scottish man, complete with kilt, appeared. In the thickest of genuine Scottish accents he invited us out to the Battle of Bannockburn commemorative service. He said it was starting in ten minutes.

Turns out, we happened to be there on July 22, almost the anniversary of the famous battle that took place there on July 23 and 24, 1314.

This battle is a big deal. It was during the First War of Scottish Independence. Scottish King Robert the Bruce led his troops against King Edward II and his troops. The English had a hard time with the boggy terrain, and this Scottish victory was the turning point of the war.

We got to follow this parade into the Memorial with the bagpipes and drummer playing.

The Society of William Wallace coordinated a whole commemorative service of the battle. They did the bagpipes, a speech or two, and a few songs.

The service was stirring. You couldn’t help but feel the call to go fight for Scotland! Of all the countries I’ve visited, this one is definitely my favorite. I don’t just say that because more than a third of my ancestors were Scots. Scotland is a darling of a country. The landscape is beautiful, but it’s the friendly and down-to-earth people I like the most!

Well, what’s wonderful about Scotland is the people and also the fact that the sun did not beat down on my fair, freckled skin, making me sweat buckets. I was made for this cool, wet place!

They had a musician there, a man with a guitar, named Ted Christopher. Ted played a few of his songs for us and invited the whole crowd out to a local pub afterwards.

Ted’s music is very good. You can check it out here. We enjoyed it all so much, Alan went straight over to Ted after the service and chatted with him. As it turns out, Ted travels the world with his music. Alan enjoyed talking to him, and Ted even gave Alan a copy of his book!

I headed over to the Robert the Bruce statue with the boys to look around.

Afterwards, we headed over to the impressive and enormous William Wallace Memorial.

You can see this monument all over Stirling. It’s even more impressive than our Washington Memorial in Washington, D.C. It may be around the same height, I don’t know. The way it’s perched on top of a mountain makes it impossible to miss.

I absolutely love a good cardboard cutout photo opportunity. You can see the joy on my face! My children meanwhile……they prefer to make the funny faces, even in cardboard cutouts.

You drive uphill to get to the Monument. Then there is a shuttle to drive you up to it. We’d already bought so many tickets over our time in the U.K. We decided to settle for just seeing this one from the outside and visiting its cafe and gift shop.

This coffee shop was my favorite!!! Not only did they have delicious drinks, but they had all sorts of baked goods, and two gluten free options!! I had actual choices!! Traveling is exhausting though. Alan took a nap while we were here.

We bought a few things from the gift shop too, and then we headed to our hotel in Dumphries, a couple of hours away.

My allergies bothered me this entire trip. That’s why I was wearing glasses instead of contacts. My eyes kept itching and swelling, and I was always sneezing. So much sneezing. So I was concerned about how old this Holiday Inn looked from the front.

I was relieved to find there is actually a newer building where the rooms are.

And what is to see in Dumphries??? This castle!

We saw Caerlaverock Castle on our last day in the U.K. Then we drove down to Heathrow Airport. That was a solid six hour road trip, with lots of stops for food and such.

The rest areas we went through on our way back to the airport were large and nice. The English may be famous for drinking tea, but there were coffee shops everywhere!

Our last night in the U.K we stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn London Heathrow Airport, where I had the meal I’d been looking for the entire trip!

Gluten free fish and chips!!! You cannot go to England without eating fish and chips, and being gluten free had put a real damper on that for me.

Our hotel served this in their restaurant. Caleb was a good sport and went down to the lobby to eat with me. The others had pizza ordered to the room, and believe it or not, it was reasonably priced!

This was the perfect way to end our U.K. vacation.

Thank you for hanging with me through this series. Most vacations are a combination of travel struggles and triumphs, but this one was a pure blessing, hurdles and all. Navigating unknown train systems are always a pain to me, but once we left London, we had our rental car and didn’t need the train.

Family vacation is always worth the expense.

It’s the most concentrated together time you can get. I feel like it bonds the family together to go on adventures together. That’s what it’s all about, whether it’s a huge vacation like this one, or a day trip to a state park. I’m so thankful we got to do this. Our time with our children at home is so short, and I want to enjoy it while we can!!

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On day *we lost count* of our English road trip, we left York, and this became a Scottish road trip!

On to Scotland we go!!!

Our family has a great deal of Scottish ancestry, and we were excited to see a small part of Scotland. Plus, the road trip days were good for recovering my poor right heel. I had (and still have) a killer case of plantar fasciitis. These long tourist days were a problem.

We only had one goal left for England. Locate Hadrian’s Wall, and take some photos of it.

That was easier said than done. I’d asked around and learned there were good places to see the ancient wall near the historic park of Vindolanda.

Hadrian’s Wall was the wall built to mark the furthest northern boundary of the Roman Empire.

For a brief time Rome tried to go even further and built the Antonine Wall (further up in Scotland). But Hadrian’s Wall was the better built and more famous one, and Alan and I were excited to see it.

Legend goes that the Romans could not beat back the unruly Scots, so they walled them off. As a person of Scottish ancestry, there is something undeniably marvelous about being possibly the only people the Romans couldn’t conquer!!

I had to see this, and Alan readily agreed with me. After twenty-three years together, we have far more shared interests than we did in the beginning I think.

As our boys grow older, they actually find our field trips more and more interesting too. So have patience if you have children who do not share your enthusiasm for a historical vacation destination! They may come around yet.

“And what is Vindolanda?” you might ask.

Vindolanda is an ancient Roman settlement smack dab in the middle of nowhere in northern England. It is believed to be a headquarters for the Roman Army while they were building Hadrian’s Wall. The village of Vindolanda predates the wall!

Vindolanda is this huge Roman fort and current archaeological study site. The community was built and re-built nine times! Nine times!? I’m no expert, but it sounds like the local Northumbrians put a fight up to the Romans the whole time.

How is it Alan and I always end up at an archaeological site on our vacations? Ha! We love this stuff. I felt like Vindolanda and the area around it had a very mythical feel. The unearthed ghost town of stone, the beautifully deep green grass all around, the sheep and cows in the background, the overall abandoned atmosphere of the area in combination with the deep gray cloudy skies constantly threatening rain, made the whole area an enchanting portal to the past.

If I had had two healthy feet, I could have walked around there all day!

However, we did not feel like we had too long to explore. It had already rained on us a little, and the clouds assured us they had more to give. Plus, we had this mission to find Hadrian’s Wall and to get to Scotland.

We still managed to cover most everything outside and only bypassed the Roman museum. In retrospect, I cannot believe we didn’t visit the museum. We would have learned so much more of the Roman history if we had taken the time to see it.

Uncovered stone was everywhere, and I feel like if they kept digging, even more and more Roman ruins lie beneath the beautiful carpet of green grass.

They have rebuilt a replica at the Vindolanda Archaeological park of a Roman fort of the time. It reminded us much of the York City Walls and the Tower of London. The stones look much cleaner though. It still looks like new construction. The shocking thing is the builders tried to use Roman methods and test out how their replica would hold up. Oddly enough, the reconstructed fort sank into the ground over the short time that it has been up. I cannot remember the exact number, but it was something like in ten years it shrank like forty feet. My numbers are off, but it was a shocking amount!

I wanted to look up information on this for you with exact information, but I could not find anything online! I wish I’d kept a brochure, but I’ve misplaced it.

The good news is there is a book about Vindolanda’s history, and this is the link to buy it on Amazon. (*Disclaimer that I do make ad money off my Amazon links) I am ordering it too.

Of course, we all enjoyed climbing on this fort replica and reading about it.

Romans and Normans alike when they would set up a tower, or fort, or castle, would always build it in timber first. In fact, some castles never made it past the timber stage. The ones that lasted through centuries are made of stone. Doesn’t it make you think of the three little pigs? Ha! I am thankful to currently be living in a house of brick!

I mean, what community doesn’t want a pool?

Don’t you love the scenery here? It was so quiet, and nature was kind of showing off with how enchanting it all was. Even with my eagerness to see Hadrian’s Wall and make it to Scotland, it felt sad to leave it.

After Vindolanda, we thought we could follow road signs and GPS and find Hadrian’s Wall fairly easily.

No. We were wrong. Turns out, Hadrian’s Wall is not commercialized at all. This was surprising to Alan and me because we both thought of it as such a big deal!

Also, I should mention that English people have plenty of stone fences. They are everywhere, so just because you see a nice long stone barrier, that does not mean it’s an ancient Roman wall.

Everywhere we drove to try to find Hadrian’s Wall turned out to look like someone’s private property full of livestock pastures and a dead end.

We constantly felt like we were trespassing on farm land. The stereotype about the fields of sheep in the UK is right on the money. Sheep everywhere! I thought that was cool though. In America, we are more likely to have fields of cows. I rarely see sheep, but then I do not live in the country either.

In our search for the famous Hadrian’s Wall, we’d pull up to an area, and look around like, “Well? Is it here? Where is it exactly? Are we allowed to drive there?”

Plus, Alan and I were up against a few challenges in addition to feeling like we were trespassing in a foreign country:

1. Complainers in the backseat: The boys did NOT care for our Hadrian’s Wall Quest. They wanted to move on.
2. It was starting to rain.
3. My feet were shot again from the Vindolanda walk, and I did not trust them to get me through a WET, grassy field in uneven terrain.

As it turns out, if you want to see the wall for real, you must do at least a little hiking.

We finally found a spot where we were sure the wall was close by, and we were able to pull off the road in a parking area where we did not feel like we were showing up on somebody’s farm uninvited.

We ended up at the part of the wall called Walltown Crags.

I say that “we” finally found the wall, and we did.

However, it was only Alan who got out of the car, crossed the grassy fields in the rain, and took the photos.

The boys stayed in the car with me, thanks to plantar fasciitis and the rain. I was still happy though. I felt like Alan got the photos for us, and I had the satisfaction of being parked there anyway. You do what you can. It’s like when we were in York, and Alan and Caleb saw York Minster for us. I felt represented, and I got the photos, so I was happy.

It was no small jog from the car to the wall in the rain. Once Alan got out, our car was swarmed by flies!

The boys sounded the alarm from the backseat. “Ewww! Mom, look at all the flies on Dad’s side! We’ve got to move the car so when Dad gets back he doesn’t let all the flies in the car!”

Hmmm. Well, let’s give it a few minutes. This should take him a while.

It took him no time at all. He did that half mile, hilly and rocky jog in the rain like it was nothing, and boom, he was back!

I maneuvered my way over the car console and sat down in the driver’s seat without exiting the vehicle. We figured I’d move the car away from the swarm. Hopefully, it wouldn’t follow us. Dad could hop in the passenger seat, and then we could drive a few yards and switch back.

That was the only time in our whole England trip that I ever drove the car.

And of course, the swarm followed us, so it was all for nothing. Somehow, none of them got in the car though! So it was a win.

We got back on the road and headed for Stirling, Scotland.

It may seem odd that we skipped Edinburgh, but we aren’t really big city people.

I mean, we live in a big city, and all the crowds do get old. It’s nice to take a vacation to smaller places instead. I picked Stirling because of all the history with Bannockburn, Sir Robert the Bruce, and William Wallace. Also, this is where the Scottish Highlands meet the lowlands. It is in the geographical center of the country, to the south. Plus, Stirling Castle looked like an excellent castle to tour. We do love a castle.

I’ll tell you all about Stirling in my next post.

Our last outing of our England to Scotland road trip was a stop at Cafe 91 in Lockerbie, Scotland.

The food was yummy, and this was a memorable stop. For one thing, the place was an hour out from closing when we arrived, though we didn’t realize it at the time. It closes at five o’clock. I guess dinner restaurants and lunch places are two different things in the U.K. We had trouble with this.

The two waitresses were beautiful young ladies with the thickest Scottish accents I’d ever heard. In fact, Scotland solidly did not disappoint with the accents!

Also, our family fooled absolutely no one. Everyone automatically knew we were an American family. I guess our cultural camouflage wasn’t good.

Alan ordered a Scottish meat with his meal called “black pudding.” We asked them what black pudding is, and they said it’s really best to eat it first and then ask. Ha! Alan was a good sport and did just that. I tasted it too. We never did ask them about the ingredients. We could tell they wanted to go home.

Instead, I looked it up online. Black pudding is also called blood sausage, and it is made with pig’s blood, oatmeal, pig fat, and spices. Not exactly kosher, but that’s okay.

We were so excited to be in Scotland! After our early dinner in Lockerbie, we drove on to the Holiday Inn in Stirling. It was an excellent hotel with an outstanding breakfast.

I can’t wait to tell you all about Stirling Castle in the next post.

It was the best day, and the Scottish people were by far our favorite. I’m telling you the Scots are like American Southerners! They were so welcoming. We had the best time.

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