Falkland Palace – A Traveling Fool

My last full day in Scotland on this particular trip involved a day trip from Edinburgh to Anstruther and St Andrews with a stop in Falkland. I had been to St Andrews several times before, but only passing through, with just a half hour or an hour to spend there. This time I would have about three hours.

Whenever heading north from Edinburgh the route goes through South Queensferry as both the rail bridge and a couple car and truck bridges take folks across to the other side of the Firth of Forth. The Queen in question was Saint Margaret, consort of King Malcolm Canmore. This time, when we stopped, I zoomed in with my camera on the rail bridge and caught a train on its way to Inverness. I think sometime I should take the train from Edinburgh to Inverness just so I can ride across that bridge.

Founded as a fishing village in 1225, Anstruther (pronounced like “ANN-stir”) is now a resort village on the north coast of the Firth of Forth where it meets the North Sea. It is a pretty little village that can be walked from end to end without much effort.

Anstruther is another British place name that illustrates how British English and American English can be slightly different. There is Belvoir Castle, which is pronounced “Beaver” (don’t ask). Leicester Square in London = “Lester”. Southwark Cathedral = “SUTH-erk”. One of my favorites isn’t a place — it is just the British word for aluminum, which is aluminium (“al-u-MINI-um”).

We were dropped off at a spot where we could use restrooms and get some coffee. We would be picked up at the other end of the main road bordering the water in about 45 minutes. I had plenty of time to walk around, explore and take photos.

When we got to St Andrews, we were given the choice of being dropped off at one of three places – the main street in town, the Old Course, or the Cathedral. We would be picked up at the in town drop off spot in three hours, so we were all shown where that was first. Then we drove over to the Old Course.

The public cn have lunch at the Clubhouse. It isn’t necessary to be a member. There is a museum a short distance from there. A ways across the course is the hotel where a lot of the golfers who come to play stay. It also isn’t necessary to be a member to play the course, but there is a long wait for a tee time. So advanced planning is necessary.

Several people jumped off at the Old Course. The rest of us headed off to the cathedral. There were only three of us that got off there. The others were apparently going into town for lunch first.

I had never had time to visit the cathedral. On the other trips to St Andrews we had been dropped off at the Old Course and had to hot foot it at a sprightly pace down the road to the castle. I could only gaze at the cathedral longingly from the road next to the castle. So this trip, it was my first priority.

St Andrews Cathedral was built in the 12^th century and was ransacked and ruined during the Scottish Reformation in the 16^th century. The grounds over which the ruins are scattered are quite extensive. Many people have been buried there throughout the centuries. Some of the tombstones depicted the person buried beneath as a golfer. What a place for a lifelong golfer to be buried!

After I took all the photos I wanted, I headed over to the town to get some lunch. Since we had had our lunch stop in St Andrews on the first day of the Scottish Castles Experience tour, I had learned about the main drag of St Andrews and had a pretty good idea of the pubs along the road.

I had been to a pub down closer to the fountain in the middle of the road, but didn’t want to go too far that way since I wanted to visit the castle after lunch. The road to the castle was fairly close to where I had come out of the cathedral grounds. So I opted for the first pub that looked welcoming and had an open table.

One of my favorite pub lunches is a ploughman’s lunch which includes bread, cheese, usually some sort of pate or ham, and maybe a hard-boiled egg. If they don’t have a ploughman’s lunch, I will often get fish & chips unless they have something else interesting like bangers & mash (sausage and mashed potatoes), toad in the hole (sausage baked inside of some Yorkshire pudding), Scotch eggs (soft-boiled eggs wrapped in sausage meat and bread crumps and deep fried), or Welsh Rarebit (a cheese toast usually made with sharp cheddar and a spicy mustard). I know. Healthy dining! That’s why I like to get the ploughman’s lunch. It is the least of all evils.

I do like to eat in pubs because they are much cheaper than restaurants and take much less time to get your food. You also order at the bar, so no waiting on the server to come around. And you usually pay when you order, so can leave when done instead of waiting for the bill. It is plenty of food for me too.

Sometimes I will do a café, especially one in a museum or other attraction that I am visiting (such as the one at Holyrood Palace). I prefer to eat the local cuisine, so I tend to avoid American fast food shops unless I am really pressed for time and/or desperate.

The particular pub I chose had a board outside that said they had a ploughman’s lunch. So I ordered that and a half pint of local Scottish dark ale. They served grape jelly with the meal. It was not to spread on the bread, but to eat with the pate. The first time that happened years ago I thought that it would most likely be disgusting, as peanut butter and liverwurst had been (which was a common sandwich on offer at several sandwich shops). But I was wrong. It was delicious.

Now well fortified, I headed for the castle. I had made a hurried tour of the castle several years before when I had an hour total in St Andrews. This time I wanted to take the trail down to the water’s edge. Then I would see how much time I had left to tour the castle again before I needed to be at the pickup point.

I often overestimate how much time something will take, especially since I have fairly short little legs. But I can get those stubby limbs in gear and cover a lot of ground quickly. More than one tour director has commented on how fast I can move. I think it’s because of having to spend so much of my life keeping up with people much taller than me.

I got to the top of the trail quickly (even with stopping to take a couple photos on the way) and headed down, knowing it would take longer to get back up the trail than down it. Fortunately it wasn’t too steep. It was also worth it. I loved the photo of the castle with a couple of the university buildings behind it.

The castle had been built in the 12^th century for the bishops of St Andrews Cathedral. Cardinal David Beaton had the protestant preacher George Wishart burned at the stake in front of the castle in 1546. There was a marker in the street just before reaching the trail down to the beach.

Later in the same year, the Cardinal was murdered and his body hung out of the castle window. The Protestants were in control of the castle, but not for long. A French fleet bombarded the castle with enough canon fire to render it defenseless and it has been a ruin ever since.

When I came back up from the beach, I found I still had plenty of time to visit the ruins. So I paid the fee and went in to see the bottle dungeon.

Located in the northwest tower of the castle, the bottle dungeon was shaped like a bottle, with a narrow opening at the top through which the prisoner was lowered. One prisoner was even Archbishop Patrick Graham who was imprisoned in his own castle when he was judged to be insane. It is also said the body of Cardinal Beaton was stored in a chest of salt in the bottle dungeon during the siege of the castle.

I had timed my walk to the castle from the main road and so knew how long the return trip would take me. But the pickup point was a fairly long haul down South Street in front of Madras College (one of the colleges of St Andrews University). So once I had looked down into the bottle dungeon, gazed out at the sea, and climbed up on a part of the walls that was still standing, I headed back along the castle road and then down South Street.

I arrived at our rendezvous with about 15 minutes to spare, so I crossed the street to the place advertising ice cream and purchased a double scoop cone to savor as I sat on the low wall and waited for the tour coach. As others in the group arrived and asked where I had gotten my ice cream, I pointed them in the shop’s direction. By the time our chariot arrived, nearly all of us had ice cream.

On the way back to Edinburgh, we had a stop at Falkland in front of Falkland Palace. Our driver/guide told us we had time to tour the castle if we wanted, so I decided to buy a ticket and see it again. I really liked that castle.

This time, we were on our own instead of being taken around by a guide who explained everything. I was still regretting that we couldn’t take any photos. But I got a really good look at everything by being decisive and ending up first in line. That way there weren’t a lot of people in the room with me. They also took longer because they would stop and read the signs telling them what the room was and some history. Most of the time, I had whatever room I was in to myself.

When I got back to Edinburgh, I decided to stop in at the private bar in the hotel just for guests. I had a drink called a Strawberry Whisky Smash, which contained Dewars blended Scotch, strawberry, lemonade and mint. My second drink was a French Martini. This consisted of vodka, Chambord, and pineapple juice. Then I picked up a sandwich in the shop next door to the hotel and packed up to be ready to leave for the London train the next day.

Next time – return to London and spend time wandering around the Covent Garden area.

As you may remember, I have never met a castle I didn’t like. So I figured a Rabbie’s tour with four days of Scottish Castles would be a good one. I wasn’t wrong.

Shortly before this 2017 trip, I had purchased a new, four-wheeled, hard-sided, smaller suitcase to make life easier with all of the times I would need to lift and carry the darned thing on this trip. The longest I would ever be seen by the same people was five days. So five days of tops were what I brought along. I would wear each of them up to three times. So I wouldn’t need a larger case. I had it all figured out. But, for some reason, the wheels were not all that cooperative on anything but a smooth surface (like the floor inside of the store where I bought it). Even some carpets caused an issue, much less cobblestones, uneven sidewalks and gravel. Obviously I should have test driven it before leaving home.

Because I had fought with it all the way from Waverly Train Station in Edinburgh to the hotel (just two blocks), I was not in the mood to be fighting with it for the four blocks from the hotel to the bus terminal. So I took a taxi instead. At the bus terminal all of the floors were even and tiled. Smooth sailing.

This time we had eight people – one from Malta, four from Canada, two from Germany, and me. Our Tour Director/Driver was named George and he wore a kilt. Many of the male tour directors and drivers on day trips or longer tours like this one up in Scotland wore kilts. Like all of the Rabbie’s personnel before him, George was knowledgeable, helpful, very nice to deal with, patient, and had a good sense of humor.

He would need both the patience and the good sense of humor in abundance. One of our number (not me) continually asked questions at about a five year old level. “Why did they paint the walls blue?” Each time she received an answer, she would respond with, “Oh,” and quickly ask another equally ridiculous question.

She didn’t listen to anything anyone else said, so she frequently asked things that had already been answered. Such as “Where are the people who own this castle?” when it had been said repeatedly that all of the places we were visiting were run by the National Trust of Scotland.

This carried on both while we were on the tour coach and at the site of whatever location we were touring. She drove all of the guides at the places we visited bonkers. She pretty much ignored the rest of us who were on the tour. So none of us were peppered with constant questions. Whew!

Our first castle on the tour, Falkland Palace, was built by Mary Queen of Scots’ grandfather, King James IV of Scotland. This James’ son (and Mary’s father) died at the Renaissance style palace, leaving Mary as Queen at the ripe old age of six days.

During the English Civil War, while some of Cromwell’s troops were staying there, a fire destroyed part of the palace. For a couple hundred years, the palace fell into ruin until it was bought and restored in the late 19^th century. I really liked the interior of the place, but we weren’t allowed to take photos inside. I found it to be rather cozy. It seemed like a nice place to live.

Falkland Palace had the oldest tennis court in the world still in use. Mary Queen of Scots used to play there. It managed to survive even when the palace itself was in ruins.

I really loved Falkland Palace. Even though parts were in ruins, the parts that weren’t in ruins were lovely and cozy. It seemed like a place in which it would be great to live.

We had lunch in St Andrews, in a part of town where I had never been before – along the main street in the town center. Every other time I had been there, I had confined myself to the castle and/or the Old Course. Two ladies from Quebec City (Michelle and Searan) and I had lunch at a pub on the main street. We had a tasty lunch and some of the local ale.

Built in the 1730s, the House of Dun lies in the county of Angus. More of a large country house than a castle, the Georgian house is known for its extravagant plasterwork in the salon. One of its former residents had been very handy with a needle as there was a very large amount of really well executed needlework throughout. They still had a Game Larder just outside of the kitchens. We were able to take photos inside this time.

Our last stop of the day was Dunnotter Castle. Located on a rocky outcrop with steep cliffs jutting out into the North Sea, Dunnotter was a spectacular ruin of a mainly 15^th and 16^th century castle. It was fairly recently (2015) used during parts of the filming of Macbeth, starring Michael Fassbender as the title character and Marion Cotillard as Lady Macbeth.

After Charles II was crowned King of Scotland at Scone Palace during the English Civil War, the Honors of Scotland (the Scottish Crown Jewels) were hidden at Dunnotter Castle to keep them out of the hands of Oliver Cromwell and his troops. Katherine Drummond had carried them into the castle concealed in sacks of wool.

When Cromwell besieged the castle, the Honors were smuggled out hidden among sacks of goods over the course of three visits to the castle by Christian Fletcher, a minister’s wife. They were then buried under the floor of the church until Charles II returned. In the meantime, another woman, Anne Lindsay, removed the King’s papers from the castle sewn inside of her clothes. Some pretty brave women.

On this tour, instead of booking hotels, B&Bs or hostels, we were all together in country house hotels which were included in the price of the tour. Our first two nights were to be in Thainstone House Hotel, which was near Aberdeen and built in the 18^th century. The house was set in 44 acres of woodlands. So once you were there, you were there (unless you had a car). It had a restaurant that had the reputation of the best steaks in Aberdeen. Breakfast was mighty tasty with a buffet plus a cooked breakfast to order. Our last morning there I was in the restaurant early and our driver/tour director, George, joined me.

Next time – Day 2 of the Scottish Castles Experience with Castle Fraser, the villages of Ballater and Crathie as well as Crathes Castle.