Bannockburn and Canterbury, the Ups and Downs

It's up and down the British Isles for this one. In May 2023 work took me to Stirling in Scotland where I stayed in accomodation at the University.

The site of the Battle of Bannockburn was less than two miles away so on the evening of my arrival I nipped down the road to have a look. The photo shows the flagpole in the centre of the Bannockburn Monument - not quite surrounded by a circular wall as it has two sections of wall facing each other with the two other quarters of the circle left open.

The battle was fought over two days, 23-24 June 1314 following the two opposing sides, Scottish under King Robert the Bruce and English under King Edward II having camped on either side of what would become the battlefield. The photo shows a 1964 statue of Robert the Bruce in armour and mounted on a war horse. His skull, re-discovered at Dunfermline Abbey in 1818, was used in modelling the head.

On day one of the battle King Robert, not yet fully armed but dressed for reconnaisance and armed only with an axe, was spotted by Sir Henry de Bohun, the nephew of the Earl of Hereford, who had charge of one of King Edward's cavalry divisions. De Bohun, in full armour and armed with a lance, charged King Robert but being on a lighter horse, Robert dodged the lance and on passing, swung his axe at de Bohun's head, killing him.

A view of Stirling Castle - the white building in the distance - from the battlefield. At the end of the first day of battle the English had retreated across the line of the Bannockburn stream and unknown to them their position and weakness of morale were reported to King Robert by Sir Alexander Seton, a Scottish knight who had been in the service of King Edward II.

On day two the English were surprised to see Scottish pikemen advancing in formation towards them. The Earl of Gloucester tried to persuade Edward to postpone the battle but was accused of cowardice by the king. Outraged he advanced towards the enemy, was surrounded and killed. The Scots drove the English back and the English and Welsh longbows were ordered to stop firing as their own comrades were being killed by their arrows. An attempt to flank the Scots was thwarted by King Robert's cavalry. King Edward was forcibly led away from the field by his bodyguard including Giles d'Argentan, who once having Edward clear of danger insisted on returning to the field as "...never yet have I fled from battle..." He charged back at the Scots and was killed.

Robert the Bruce won a decisive victory. Perhaps of 16,000 troops under King Edward some 11,000 were killed either at the battle or during their retreat. Since my visit the Visitor Centre was rebuilt in 2014. Since then the view of historians has been that it was in the wrong place anyway and that the most likely place for the battle is a mile and a half away to the east... Sorry for wasting your time with these photos...!

We jump to June 2003 and I found myself in Canterbury in Kent at the University. Why, I'm not sure - for some reason I made no note as to whether this was for a conference, an event specifically for the university, or to present a training course for the Regional Support Centre for the South East region. I could spot the towers of Canterbury Cathedral from the university and decided to walk - I'll just repeat that for dramatic effect - WALK there AND BACK! all the way down into the city.

I have to report that going down was easier than walking back uphill...

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Edinburgh, June 2005

Tuesday 28 June 2005. Edinburgh was a regular calling place when I was working in the Higher and Further Education sectors. My job was to help and support managers of colleges and universities to successfully identify needs for business change and bring it about successfully and positively.

I taught strategy, process review techniques, risk management, project management and change management. The project management was about introducing new ways of doing things based on an understanding of reviews of an organisation's business processes. The change management was about supporting staff through the change, ensuring they understood the needs, supported it as much as possible, and were trained in good time to be ready to change from one way of working to a new way.

Other topics I covered were managing programmes of multiple projects, business and community engagement and records management. With Edinburgh being a major hub for Scotland as well as having three universities and several colleges, it meant that I was a regular visitor.

I had my favourite restaurants to visit depending on which part of the city I found myself in. Often I would arrive in the early evening the day before a training session and the photo here shows that it was taken at 6:30pm from the clock tower, which is part of St Cuthbert's Parish Church. The church on the left is St John's Scottish Episcopal Church. St Cuthberts possibly dates right back to the lifetime of the saint, though the building has been destroyed and rebuilt several times over the centuries.

The current church dates from 1892-1894 and replaced a Georgian church of 1775 which itself replaced one of two centuries before. This one saw Jacobite supporters troops stationed there in 1745 at which time David Williamson was minister. His manners were so impeccable that he was known as Dainty Dave. In the early 1800s at the height of Edwardian grave robbing, a watchtower was built in the churchyard which still stands.

In 1773 when the Georgian church's predecessor was being demolished, workmen discovered an urn containing an embalmed heart. It was thought to be that of a Crusader that died and his heart was returned to his family.

Seen in this and the previous photograph is Edinburgh Castle atop of Castle Rock. This latter is the remains of a volcanic plug of a very hard type of basalt. Standing proud above the city, its strategic and defensive position is obvious, but basalt does not hold water very well and a 28 metre (92 ft) well had to be constructed to supply the castle which even so would often run dry during a long siege or drought.

At the foot of Castle Rock are the Princes Street Gardens. The same movement of ice during the Ice Age that was diverted by the hardness of Castle Rock, created a hollow on the north side of what is now the Royal Mile slope up to the castle. A marsh was formed there and King James III of Scotland ordered the hollow to be flooded to create a better defence to the castle in 1460. Named Nor Loch, in the ensuing centuries it became a favourite spot for suicides, a cess pit as sewage drained or was thrown down the hillside and a place where criminals were executed by drowning. This latter practice was outlawed in 1685.

Nor Loch was drained in the 19th century and Princes Street Gardens were created from 1820. During the creation of Edinburgh Waverley Railway Station and the railway tracks leading through the gardens towards it, several bones were found of drowned victims.

Princes Street itself is found on the north side of Princes Street Gardens and dates from the latter half of the 1700s, laid out along a line formerly occupied by a country lane, Lang Dykes, dating back to medieval times. Originally planned to be named after Edinburgh's patron saint, St Giles, the name was objected to by King George III, as it reminded him of the slums of St Giles in London. It was instead called Prince's Street in honour of the King's son, later King George IV but by 1840 it had lost its apostrophe which had tended to move about variously as "Prince's" to "Princes'" and back again, causing confusion.

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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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Aberfeldy, Crieff and Pitlochry

Thursday 22 June 2023. Thursday morning and we are back in the coach and on our way to Crieff for a brief stop to see the memorial to the Black Watch regiment.

This is the view from our front seats on the coach. It's a glorious day and we are looking forward to another day in the Trossachs visiting places we have never seen before.

Wade's Bridge at Aberfeldy over the River Tay dates from 1866-1868. It has four arches of voussoirs (wedge-shaped stones) that take the B846 road. We cross and then turn right as the Black Watch Memorial is on the river bank. There's a small park with putting green and a class of primary age schoolchildren are enjoying its facilities as their school year comes towards an end.

The Black Watch were originally the 42nd (Royal Highland) Regiment of Foot, formed in 1739. In 1881 they were amalgamated with the 73rd (Perthshire) Regiment of Foot, dating from 1780 and at that point the Black Watch Battalion was born. "What's that silver line?" someone asked. "It looks like a lightning rod..." I suggested, "Either that or a personal telephone wire to the statue..."

Then it was back on the bus for the drive to Pitlochry. We passed a small herd of red deer to our left. I saw them but wasn't sitting for the full journey with my phone camera at the ready, so you'll have to imagine them. Antlers and everything...

We came to Pitlochry and I saw a signpost to a salmon ladder on the river down to our left. This is where salmon swimming up the river to breed come to a taller waterfall (or in this case a dam) than they can leap, so a series of pools act as steps that they can make the rise in short jumps.

After getting off the coach we went for a bite of lunch and then walked back to the roadsign, under a railway bridge and found ourselves at the restaurant. The river gurgled its way under the road to our right and stretched off to our left. There were no more indications as to the direction of the salmon ladder so we decided that unless we stumbled across it by accident we would probably miss it. We were right - we missed it... In fact as we got back to the coach park there was another signpost pointing in the opposite direction that we had walked. Why they send cars down that way I have no idea...

We walked back under the bridge to the main road and passed a small park. At the corner of the park and main road was the town's War Memorial.

The town had loads of inviting pubs. It was a very hot day. Ignoring them was a bit like torture, but I am under doctors' orders not to let alcohol pass my lips and probably having it via intravenous drip is probably not a good idea either.

I could have murdered a Guinness too... Miss Franny was very sympathetic and bought me an ice cream cone. As a treat she had some ice cream put into it as well. It still didn't taste like Guinness...

Another Wade's Bridge - this was the old bridge near the hotel, very narrow and now disused for all traffic except pedestrian and replaced by the new Tummel Bridge at it's side. As we rounded a blind corner a BT Open Reach van came flying round far too fast. How he avoided us I'm not sure but he had to reverse back. This was made a little difficult because a split second later a small black sports car did the same and just managed to stop behind him. Mr BT hadn't seen this though so set off backwards at the boggart (fast!)

The sports car driver had very good reflexes I have to say because he had his car in reverse pretty smartish and managed to avoid a collision. Both he and our driver Steve were frantically pipping their horns to try to get the BT van to slow down. All ended well, though we kept a wary eye out for BT vans the following day!

Once back at the hotel we went for a little wander on the lawn down to the loch but there were a few midges about and we thought discretion might be the better part of valour!

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A Day in Perth, Scotland

Wednesday 21 June 2023. We are on a coach holiday in the Scottish Highlands. "Beautiful Trossachs" someone said - I knew I shouldn't have worn that kilt in the wind...

Today we were to spend the day in Perth. The church is St John's Kirk - kirk being the Gaelic for church.

High Street. Perth Theatre is No.185, but this is now the rear entrance as the theatre address is Mill Street on the next street running parallel. It was opened in 1909 and extended in 1980.

In 2016 the extension was demolished and rebuilt and the entrance moved to Mill Street opposite the theatre's sister venue, Perth Concert Hall.

Also on High Street, lower down towards the River Tay is this cafe with an imaginative use of flowers. I'm not sure whether they were real or artificial but they do look good.

Between Nos. 13-15, an alleyway of 1699 with a dated pediment with carved head and the initials of RG (Robert Graham) and EC (Elizabeth Cunningham).

We walked down to the River Tay. This view is looking down Tay Street and the river itself is to our left. The church is St Matthew, 1871.

Smeaton's Bridge, aka the Old Bridge or in local dialect: the Auld Brig. A bridge had existed earlier but was demolished in 1621 and ferryboats had to be used until the construction of this bridge 1766-1771.

Having passed underneath the bridge via a pathway that dipped below road level, we came out to some gardens.

I started this sketch of St John's Kirk from the photograph seen earlier whilst we were sitting in the lounge one night. It didn't get finished until a fair few days after we got back and is pencil crayon over pencil drawing in the A4 sketch book.

Coming back to the hotel we stopped at Queen's View, a viewpoint over Loch Tummel that Queen Victoria had visited with Prince Albert. It was apparently on this trip that Albert decided to buy Balmoral.

Before starting the sketch of Perth, I finished the pencil sketch started the previous night of the view of Loch Tummel from the front lawn of the hotel.

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Awa' to Loch Tummel in Bonnie Scotland

The other week an advertising postcard dropped through the door. Normally I would just chuck this sort of thing straight in the recycling bin without particularly looking at it, but it did have a nice picture on it so I gave it a glance.

It was from a coach tour firm called Lochs & Glens Holidays and was offering a holiday called Scenic Scotland based at a hotel in the Scottish Highlands on the banks of Loch Tummel. I drank in the view for a moment and then read through the card and it did look a good holiday break and for a quite reasonable price. So I ran it past Miss Franny who sort of grunted and said, "Well get on with it then..." Within a couple of hours - I don't like to rush into these things... - we were booked on the holiday and had snagged front seats on the coach.

So on Tuesday 20 June 2023, we found ourselves standing amongst the somewhat horrendous roadworks outside the River Wyre Hotel on the Singleton to Fleetwood road, where an empty coach picked us up, the only two passengers getting on at the first stop. We then picked up several more in Cleveleys, then Blackpool, then a very soggy large group in Lytham St Annes before hitting the motorway north. We picked up a final soggy bunch of folks at Penrith and then made our way back onto the M6 until it ran out onto the M74 up into Scotland.

Gretna Green, then Moffat where we stopped for lunch, passing Glasgow where we jumped onto the M73 then the M80, then M9 to Bannockburn and Stirling, passing first the white flagpole of Bannockburn's battle site then Stirling's magnificent castle sitting on the core of an ancient volcano as does the castle at Edinburgh.

Dunblane, then onto cross-country 'A' roads. We by-pass Perth, then Pitlochry, both places we shall visit during the coming days then we cut off to cross Garry Bridge over the River Garry and from there it's narrow, winding roads with sloping banks to either side - one going up and the other dropping away. Loch Tummel comes into view on our left and a long way down. There's ten miles of it to come before we get to our hotel which sits at the far end.

We are riding shotgun on the front seats on the nearside of the coach. As such I had a great view of the road ahead. As we approached our hotel the coach was travelling down what seemed to be an ever-narrower road with steep bends that were impossible to see around until we were halfway round. By then the coach would be taking up every bit of the road's width because of it's length and the fact that the bus itself was very unbendy... As we approached a bend to the right I spotted a pair of brown legs disappear round the corner ahead. "There's something running up the road!" I said. When we rounded the corner it was a hare, running up the road before us until a handy gateway allowed it to nip off into a yard. No chance of a photo, so here's an impression done a couple of days after we got back.

We got to the hotel around 4:30 in the afternoon and the organisation of this place was fantastic. They emptied the coach of our luggage and it was delivered up to our rooms without any fuss or the need for us to touch it. In fact as we sat in the lounge just after an excellent meal, another three coaches turned up and they had the luggage from all three into the hotel and cleared up to the rooms within 20 minutes. I call that impressive. We had time before and after our meal to wander across the lawn in front of the hotel to view the lock and some fabulous scenery. A water wheel was on the side of one building, but it appeared to have lost some of its paddles. I started a sketch of this view but it didn't get finished until the following day.

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The Edinburgh Parthenon

Wednesday 26 April 2006. I'm in Edinburgh to do some training at Edinburgh University. There were many such visits to Edinburgh, sometimes to train university staff and sometimes to train staff from local colleges, these latter events being arranged by the local JISC Regional Support Centre.

On this occasion I climbed the hill from the eastern end of Princes Street up to the Parthenon. Not quite with the same weight of time behind it as the one in Athens, or even with the same purpose in mind, it never-the-less is an imposing sight from below. There was, perhaps, a brief thought along the lines of "where's the rest of it?", but hey... The tower on the right is Nelson's Monument. It supports a naval semaphore. A string of these were built within sight of each other originating at the Admiralty in London and in emergencies a message could be sent to the far end of the country by waving the arms of the semaphore. Given how many days it would have taken to travel by ship or overland in those days of wooden fighting ships, the semaphore could be used to gain intelligence of enemy shipping movements. Or a dispatch rider could send, "Expect me on Thursday - have the kettle on..."

In the case of this particular tower, it would be clearly visible by telescope from any Naval shipping moored in the Firth of Forth below me to the north. Together the Paqrthenon and Nelson's Monument make up the National Monument of Scotland, a memorial to the Napoleonic Wars.

A telescopic view from the same spot brings the Firth of Forth a bit closer. The Royal Yacht Britannia is moored there and open to visitors since its retirement as a conveyance for the Queen.

Edinburgh is somewhat hilly. In fact it is bewilderingly laid out with fairly steep roads suddenly crossing deep ravines. One such is Low Calton, over which this archway was built to take the Great London Road across the fifty foot (15m) deep ravine. It was opened during the visit of Prince Leopold of Saxe Coburg, later King Leopold I, the first king of the Belgians and the uncle of Prince Albert, the consort to Queen Victoria.

One of the buildings of the Edinburgh University.

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VLEs in Aberdeen

Monday 5 June 2006. I drive over to Newcastle for the usual Monday morning team meeting and then fly up to Aberdeen with Jac to run a VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) workshop tomorrow at Aberdeen University.

It's a place that I've never been to before. Aberdeen is overcast and dark, but with some quite spectacular architecture.

If there's one architectural feature that Scotland does well and is proud of - it's turrets.

There's not a lot of time for exploring but we do need to find somewhere for a meal.

Tuesday 6 June 2006. The following morning shows us a much brighter, warmer and more cheerful Aberdeen. The statue is of William Wallace. Not that he had a great deal to be cheerful about by all accounts and I'm still trying to work out if he's just poked a hole through his tunic with that great long pointy sword...

A view of Aberdeen University. Time to go to work...

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