Culloden Battlefield and a Folk Museum

It's Friday morning, 23 June 2023 and we set off for a two-hour drive from our hotel at Loch Tummel almost to Inverness to visit the battle site of Culloden. "Who was fighting?" asked someone who should have paid more attention in her History classes. "I think it was the French..." came a reply. Steve the driver was too busy driving (or laughing) to reply so I chirrupped up. "It was the Scots and the English, the French had sent a few to fight on the Scottish side and England won. It was the end of the 1745 Bonnie Prince Charlie rebellion..." (a few murmers of recollection at that point) "...and it was the last big battle to be fought on English soil." (a burst of laughter at that!) "I mean British soil!" I hastily amended. Just testing you...

Sadly this is the only one of my photos of the visit as we spent most of the time looking around the excellent museum which had a surround movie showing on all four walls and a large ginger-haired Scotsman demonstrating how the Scots charged with swords and shields and just a few firearms against the massed cannon and Brown Bess muskets of the English.

This was the last battle on 16 April 1746 of the Jacobite Rebellions - Jacobite because the English had invited the Protestant William of Orange to be King William III, deposing the catholic King James II, whose name in Latin would be Jacoba. This was an event some 57 years in the past by the time of Culloden. During that time King William III had ruled together with Queen Mary II and subsequently on his own, then came Queen Anne, then George I and at time of battle King George II was on the throne. (It was early morning, after all...)

Consequently the English had had time to form a counter-action to the Scots' habit of knocking aside a musket and bayonet with their small round shields, known as targes with a backhand motion, to plunge a sword forward to kill their foe. At Culloden instead of trying to kill the enemy in front of them the English thrust their bayonets at the enemy attacking the soldier to the right.

The battlefield has been preserved almost exactly as it was in 1746, the only difference being the long grass, which would have been grazed by cattle and goats in 1746. To combat this some Shetland cattle and British primitive goats have been introduced to help return the site to a short-cropped surface. Red flags denote the English lines whilst blue ones (vaguely visible to the left and further to the left of the red flag - at least the poles are) denote the Jacobite lines which included some French regiments and Irish picquets. Charles Edward Stuart - Bonnie Prince Charlie - was behind the Jacobite line.

I've zoomed in a bit here and added pointy fingers to show the flagpoles of the Scottish line. The battle started with artillery fire at long range. The cannon fired round shot but at extreme range they were unlikely to kill or wound more than one person per shot. As the Scottish charge got closer the English turned to firing canister - literally a can filled with musket balls that, when fired, spread the balls out like a shotgun effect. This caused devastation amongst the Scottish army. The battle lasted just one hour and resulted in around 50 deaths and 200 wounded English whilst the Scots and their allies suffered 1500-2000 killed or wounded. The hunting down of men as an aftermath of the battle in an attempt to destroy the clan system earned the English commander, the Duke of Cumberland (King George II's younger son) the nickname of 'Butcher' Cumberland.

In years past, I would have loved to walk the battlefield. Sadly I'm no longer as sprightly as I used to be. Cairns mark the dead of the various clans, French batallion and English. The battlefield is a designated war grave. In recent years there have been instances of people climbing on, even picnicking on the cairns and leaving litter. If you visit, please don't be such a prat. Though I suspect few such prats read this blog...

From Culloden we go to Aviemore for lunch. This ski resort has become very fashionable but mainly only since the chair lift was installed in 1961. As such it has the aspect of a modern town despite having been occupied since the Bronze Age. There are stone circles nearby but we didn't see them. I had only pottered about the museum and then gone around the corner to take the photo of the battle site, but it was enough to tire me out for a while. So we were mainly only interested in having some lunch and ended up in a Costa just a few yards from the coach. A couple of women were seen by other passengers heading into a cafe to order a meal with only 15 minutes to go and with a 10 minute walk back to the coach. The other passengers reminded them of this fact. "Oh it won't matter," one said. Steve had to go and drag them out. I mean - who would think themselves so important that they would be willing to deliberately make 40 other people wait for them?

After Aviemore we go to the Highland Folk Museum at Newtonmore. They have Highland cattle, reindeer and a collection of old buildings that have been carefully catalogued, demolished and transported here for rebuilding. (Er, that's the buildings, not the animals...) As can be imagined, there wasn't too much daylight getting into this building which required waddling with stooped head to get in and out.

A grocery shop with a tiny Post Office built onto the side as a lean-to. We indulged in a quarter of chocolate raisins from a huge collection of sweetie jars... We know how to live dangerously!

A Highland coo. The gent is Andrew who, along with his wife, occupied both the seats opposite us on the coach behind the driver and at our dining table for breakfast and evening meals. The coo acted like most horned animals do when I am anywhere in the vicinity and made for me, trying to appear nonchalant until the last moment when it reached the fencing and tried to stretch over wanting me to interact. What the heck do you do with a Highland coo anyway? Those horns could do damage and the nose was far too slobbery to stroke...

Another dark cottage, though this one did have some windows to allow a bit of light to get in. There just wasn't all that much light to get in at this point and in fact not long after this we headed for the coach as it began to rain. We headed back to the Loch Tummel Hotel. Memories of the deranged BT Open Reach van driver of the other night were re-invoked going down the winding road, but this time it was a very heavily-laden wagon and trailer of tree trunks from the Scottish logging industry that nearly wiped us out.

Many thanks to Steve, our driver and David, the manager of the hotel and all those who made the holiday such a pleasant one. We had been the first ones on the coach on the first morning and we were the last ones to leave it once we got back home. I had gone on the microphone - yes little shy me, who would have thought... - to give a vote of thanks to Steve before we released our first fellow travellers back into the wild at Penrith. Until the next time...

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A Morning Visit To The Vatican

Tuesday 2 September 2014. Thomson Majesty parks itself at Civitavecchia and we have a full day excursion to Rome. I'm going to split this into two articles. This, the first, will deal with the morning of our visit which is spent mainly in the Vatican and includes a visit to St Peter's Basilica. The second will deal with bits of ancient Rome and touristy bits.

The coach ride from Civitavecchia took about an hour and a bit and our guide, Roberta, told us we would be meeting with another local guide in Rome who was very knowledgeable about the sites we would see. This would be much more than me... I am not particularly religious and not Catholic, so I'm not well up in saints and popes. I've written the next sentence about ten times and scrubbed it so have given up and will leave it at that...!

Our first look at St Peter's Basilica is shown above. The chap is in our party and we all have those little green ear pieces which are attached to a small radio receiver so we can hear the guide, Francesco's voice. Well I could if my ear were shaped so that ear pieces didn't drop out all the time... I felt like a security man with my finger to my ear all the time...

The canopy in front of St Peter's is the spot from where the Pope gives his weekly Wednesday address. It's not always from this spot, so check before you go. Binoculars would be a good idea.

We enter St Peter's where bags are searched and scanned. We are in a large room running along the length of the front of the building with the main doorway into the basilica proper in front of us. This is the ceiling of this reception room.

This is our first glimpse inside. A mass of people, many of whom have arms raised - not for any religious reasons, but because they are all taking photos on equipment like phones or whatever that must be held at arms length to see the viewfinder. It's one of modern technology's bug bears - and getting worse with some people holding i-Pads up so they can see what they are photographing on a TV screen...

It's always worth looking at the ceiling in any cathedral and St Peter's does not disappoint. We'll come to the dome in a bit, but there are a few other smaller domes, some of them elliptical to watch out for too.

By turning to the right as you enter St Peter's, you come to Michaelangelo's statue of The Pietà. The body of Jesus after the Crucifixion, resting on His mother, Mary's knee. Sculpted by Michaelangelo in 1498-99 and the only example of his work that he signed. He apparently overheard someone admiring it and thinking it was someone else's work so he carved his name into the sash that Mary wears over her left shoulder. Mary is given a much younger face than a woman who had a son in his thirties, but Michaelangelo said that so pure a woman would not age as a normal person. The statue is behind bulletproof glass now, following an attack by a mentally ill person in May 1972 who repeatedly hit it with force using a geologist's hammer, causing much damage.

St Peter's Baldachin, directly under the dome and over the high altar and the tomb of St Peter below, it was commissioned by Pope Urban VIII and designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. It was built 1623-34 in bronze with gilding. Behind it is the "throne of St Peter", a chair apparently dating from the 12th century but claimed as being the actual chair used by St Peter. Deteriorating, it was placed in a throne of bronze held up by statues of Saints Ambrose and Augustine for the Latin Church and Athanasius and John Chrysostom for the Greek Church. At the rear is the Gloria, a window of yellow alabaster with the Dove of the Holy Spirit at the centre.

The famous dome is the tallest dome in the world. Not the widest, though. It is slightly smaller than the dome of the Roman Pantheon (which we shall see in the next article), but is slightly larger than the dome of Hagia Sofia in Constantinople (today's Istanbul) which had been completed in 537 A.D. Whilst designs were started in 1506, Michaelangelo took over the project in 1547 and redesigned the dome creating an ovoid shape taller than it is wide, thus reducing the outward energy of a hemisphere.

Michaelangelo died in 1564 having completed the drum upon which the dome was to sit. Work was continued by his assistant Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola, but so slowly that in 1585 Pope Sixtus replaced him with Giacomo della Porta who redesigned the outer layer of the dome, raising it to produce the profile that we know today. The dome was finished in 1590, leaving the next two popes to complete the lantern and then the crowning cross. The letters of the inscription, black upon gold are two meters tall.

The monument of Pope Alexander VII (d.1667) over a doorway. Bernini's last work, it has the Pope supported by four female figures representing virtues. Only the front two are properly visible. Charity nearest to us, holding a child and Truth with her foot resting on a globe, pierced by a thorn rising from England - Alexander spent much effort trying to suppress the growth of Protestantism. The skeleton of Death, his head covered by a shroud, holds up an hour glass, reminding the Pope that his time is limited.

Along the floor of the nave, in a strip of flooring kept free of the wear of passing feet by a double timber partition are marks showing the comparative length of other significant cathedrals of the world. This is the marker for St Paul's cathedral in London and the exact length denoted by the gold star.

And a small reminder that things don't have to be famous or have any special meaning to be beautiful. This was a random glance upwards, just as a ray of light caught the ultimate angle.

My earpiece dropped out at this point and I didn't hear what Francesco was telling us about this monument. I took a photo and looked it up when I got home. It would have been worth hearing. This is the monument to the exiled Royal Stuarts of Scotland, James (who would have been James III of England) and (Bonnie Prince) Charles amongst others. This is a monument, the tomb is below in the crypt.

Charles II had no legitimate heirs but many illegitimate ones who were either French or Catholic or even both. The throne passed to James II who had two wives. From his first wife two daughters, so the line would pass normally to his son, James, by his second wife. However, in the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1689 the throne was claimed successfully by James II's son-in-law, William and daughter Mary, ruling together as Protestants. The dynasty of Stuarts was ended and the short-lived House of Orange would rule only until the death of William and Mary's daughter Queen Anne, whereupon the House of Hanover took the British throne in the shape of King George I.

We leave St Peter's and head down the steps on the left of the Square in front of the Basilica. The Swiss Guard check visitors who head for a special tour of the crypt. There are two of these. On one tour you see where the body of St Peter used to rest. On the other, involving uneven footing and tight spaces, you see the final resting place and indeed, the Apostle's remaining bones, sealed in clear plastic containers. Only 12 people at a time can take these tours which must be booked months in advance.

Looking back at St Peter's from the massive piazza. On the right of the basilica we can just see the gable end of the Cistine Chapel. The gable end is all we are going to see of it...

The Romans removed the obelisk from Egypt, one of several taken after a spot of disagreement with a certain Cleopatra. It was close to here when St Peter was brought to his crucifixion by Nero. Hadrian, the first Christian emperor had it moved to the spot of the crucifixion and it has been here ever since, revered as the only "surviving" witness to the event.

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