Revisiting Castles

We've previously done Tantallon and Dirleton Castle before, and revisited them this weekend as part of my brothers birthday celebration. He purchased a Historic Scotland pass last year and is now working on getting all the castles in the central belt ticked off the list, so doing these two together seemed like a great idea.

The har almost hid Bass Rock from us

We had a panic about the weather as there had been lightning storms forecast for the weekend and then heavy rain was predicted for the day, so had made a back up option for the Seabird Centre (which I have only discovered now is dog friendly, so expect to see that in the future!) but thankfully the weather pulled through for us. We had some stunning har when we first arrived but it blew over in about 20 minutes to reveal a beautiful day.

Lunch was called for whilst in Tantallon, which was the first castle we did, and we enjoyed a picnic in a lovely sunny spot in the courtyard before moving onto Dirleton where we managed to catch the bulk of a 'Men at Arms' talk about medieval weaponry and life which was incredibly interesting (even though the thought of hurling burning piglet carcasses at the enemy was a bit revolting!). The chap running the show was great and did photos afterwards, my mum wanted a shot with him and, upon my request to pretend he was stabbing her, we got a terrific photo. Good times!

And then back to my mums for cake and take away - a very good ending for the day!

The weekend was finished with visiting friends in town. I had a moment of panic about whether Missy would be allowed on the replacement bus, but there was no problem at all. I popped over to the Meadows Festival as I had time to kill and we saw popped over to the Edinburgh Dog and Cat home stall and chatted away to the staff. Missy also found the fire brigade stand and decided that she was going to go and have cuddles there, so I had to make small talk in order to keep the dog happy!

I met up with my friends at the Holyrood 9a and their twins, now 4, are at that fantastic age where they can actually talk, and it's all sweet ramblings. Both are enamoured with Missy who, as I've said before, is very good with small kids. We then managed a walk around the 'mountain' (Arthurs Seat) and went looking for trolls in the hedges. After that we went back to theirs and the hubby joined us for dinner after work and we all stayed up far too late.

Tired today, but absolutely worth it!