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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The Legend of the Dun Cow's Rib

In Whittingham near Preston is an old farmhouse with a rather strange object over the door.

It is the decaying remains of a cow's rib bone. The legend that goes with it states that in the 17th century there was a great drought. So that neighbours would not die from lack of water, a farmer sent his great dun cow to roam about so that villagers could milk her at will. However the local witch milked her into a sieve, which never filled up and so the cow was milked to death. It's likely isn't it? You can see just how it must have happened...! Anyway, the cow's rib was taken and mounted over the door of the farm and if ever owners were tempted to throw it away, they were plagued by poltergeist activity until the rib was reinstated over the doorway.

Here's a photo from 1982, there was a bit more rib still in existence then, but still far less than the brackets were made for! Strangely the legend doesn't name the witch. The famous witch around the villages in this part of Lancashire was Meg Shelton, whose grave can be seen to this day, covered by an enormous stone to stop her rising from the grave. That... will be for another day!

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Fast Track To Edinburgh

Here's a first!

Updating the blog from a moving train! I'm on my way to Edinburgh and so far there seems to have been hordes of rugby fans travelling today. (Sorry!!! Footie fans - I don't follow it as you can tell!) Thankfully they all seemed to be in a good mood, though I'm not sure that the young lady felt all that tranquil getting off the Blackpool train at Preston for what sounded like a very raucous male voice choir singing or chanting "Bouncy, bouncy!". Herd mentality - everyone of them would have been appallingly affronted had the young lady been their girlfriend or wife or sister...

Anyway, all quiet on the Western Front. Or West Coast line anyway.

We played a gig at Witton Park, Blackburn on Sunday, setting up in our usual spot in the courtyard which was set out with straw bales for the audience to sit. Quite a number turned up. It was a nice day (until later - see below) and we ran out of straw bales but thankfully not out of songs!

There was a lot going on besides us. There was some chap dressed up in a duck outfit collecting entries for a duck race. I couldn't resist the temptation and called to him over the mic - "Collect a bit for charity, there's a duck..."!

From lunchtime we kept hearing thunder rumbling in the far distance, though it remained warm and sunny through the afternoon. Then as we were considering calling it a day and just as we were halfway through the last chorus huge raindrops started to fall. We finished, yelled "Thank you, goodbye!" and yanked plugs from sockets and dragged the equipment into the shelter of the ex-stable that we use as a base.

Almost immediately the Heavens opened and thunder, lightning and hailstones the size of marrowfats were bouncing all over the place.

A great day with none of the usual requests for "just one more", as the audience dived for cover too!

Up until then though it had been so sunny I couldn't read the LCD display on the keyboard which led to this rather unfortunate necessity...

For now we are still rattling on. Carlisle has just faded behind us, a mass of greenery against blue skies and sunny enough for a man to be sunbathing in just a pair of shorts on a grassy bank against a wall.

There's a relaxed air on the train. In fact I've been having to put up with the barely restrained antics of not one, but two sets of lovers in the seats before me and diagonally opposite. I noticed them first (the diagonally opposite ones) as his hand slid casually down the (admittedly splendidly inviting) rather loosely fitting back of her jeans.

Then there was a somewhat frenzied slurping noise coming from the seats directly in front and the sight, between the seats of two sets of lips locked in mortal combat. Lucky sods.

Only once have I undertaken a long train journey with a member of the opposite sex who was mutually attracted to me by way of being something of an item. There's something about the motion of a train apparently that makes couples who share an attraction experience deeper feelings.

On that journey long ago, my friend and I sat across a table, holding hands whilst both reading. Without stopping the reading every now and then she would raise my hand to press it against her cheek whilst I would occasionally pull hers towards me to gently kiss the fingers, knuckles, armpit...

This teasing continued until she came to sit cuddled next to me and it was a dreamy wonderful journey that really train companies should anticipate and provide a drop down set of curtains, sound-proofing and a plushly cushioned horizontal surface.

As we cross the border into Scotland (it could be just in front, just behind or a long way away right now) the view is of rolling low hills and bright green grassy fields with rows of trees or hedgerows hinting at streams and rivers that remain out of sight.

A herd of cows - heard of cows? Of course I've heard of cows! - is sitting in their field chewing the cud and probably passing polite conversation amongst themselves. "Mildred dear, you're drooling" or "What's wrong with Daisy? Off stomachs?"

Does it mean rain if cows sit down? Or just that they're fed up of standing?

The first set of lovers got off at Carlisle, walking out under the arched exit, locked in each other's arms to an extent that looked as if it made walking difficult.

The second set in front of me have disengaged and from the faintly heard conversation I've deduced she is an Afrikaaner and he is not. She trotted off towards the end of the carriage and I half expected him to follow after a discreet interval - though sex in a train toilet can't be all that satisfying I would have thought. Anyway to my surprise and possibly to his, she returned with a little food bag. "That's not what I was hoping for!" he could have protested, but he managed instead to look as though that's what he had had in mind all the time - so now I'm back to the slurping noises...

By now the streams and rivers are coming close enough to see - The Clyde I imagine is the tranquil stretch flowing lazily by. Not now - quite fast this train! There's a half dome of moon up in the deep blue sky. Somewhere... Perhaps we've changed direction? Ah yes, there! I knew it wasn't my imagination even with all this romance on my mind.

The cows have now turned from black and white to brown or brown and white from which I deduct, Watson, that we are indeed in Scotland, even had I not seen a river that could be the Clyde. I'm ignoring the fact that due to the lack of handy signs and information hoardings it might well be the Severn, but if that's the case then the train has most definitely changed direction.

Ah, the last set of cows had a red plastic bucket to drink from. "Ermentrude! Come and look at this! What sort of bloody pond do they call this then???"

Now we have entered a land of endless Christmas trees and a large lake or loch or tarn stunningly blue under this reflected sky and complete with a couple of boats with fishermen/poachers. We swept by too quickly to see if they were using rods or dynamite...

Well, I'll pack the laptop away in happy anticipation of arriving at Edinburgh, where hopefully Clive will be joining me to run a workshop tomorrow. We must be getting somewhere close. Just passed through a small station called Kinkerton or Kinworton or even possibly King's Scrotum - something beginning with "Kin" anyway. Train stations just weren't named with trains in mind that might speed through at over 100 miles per hour without stopping!

The cows have now turned into horses - which in conclusion I have deduced is no mean feat...!