Crichton Castle

What is this, you ask? Two posts in a week?!

Its the summer and its busy season for us! We always try and fit in lots of walks for Missy in the good weather - often just being somewhere new is just as good for her as a mammoth trek round the normal stomping grounds. 

Crichton Castle is another Historic Scotland site (and I did the maths, we have more than made the money back on the passes - the jousting really helped towards that!) in the Edinburgh area. Its not one that I would consider well known, I mean, I'm local to the area and had no idea it existed, so this was a surprising little gem of a castle for us.

Built in the 1400s and expanded in the 1500s, the most eye catching feature of this castle was the beautiful facade upon the inner wall - seeing as its made of sandstone and open to the elements, I was surprised at how well its held up. Most of the stairs are broad and were easy for Missy to manage without tying everyone up in knots, and the odd shape and build of the castle really comes into its own as you try and figure out how on earth people have gotten onto the higher landings. 

The wonderful facade

As usual with the Scottish castles, just trying to figure out which family had it when (and of course how does Mary Queen of Scots figure in this one as she's somehow involved in all the castles (hint: she attended a wedding at this one, which is the most strenuous link I've seen yet!)). The set up of this castle was more 'rugged' than most - there was a fair trek to begin with along a gravel path and a lot of the floors where very uneven - not a problem for us, but worth bearing in mind if your mobility isn't great. 

The day had defied expectation and it turned into a beautiful evening and we decided to follow the lead of some other dog walkers and check out the grounds about the castle. We weren't disappointed as we very quickly dropped into some woodland and then into a wide open grassland of wild flowers and thistles. there was just enough of a breeze to keep the midges away too - overall a very nice walk and day out! And on that note, it was off back home to a nice cup of tea and a choc ice!

White Peak Alpacas

I was down Manchester this weekend with one of the strangest car loads ever - my mother, Missy and a kitten!

This little fella. He's now been named Ziggy, which suits his fairly crazy personality perfectly. Long story short, my sister used to have three cats - two girls and a boy. The male sadly passed away last year after accidentally consuming antifreeze (if you notice a puddle under your car, always clean it up!) and they've noticed that they are now having problems with toms coming into the garden and spraying and just generally being a pain.

The solution was simple, get a male kitten. The older girls wouldn't view him as a threat so he'd integrate into the household easily, and once he's a bit older and outside, just his very presence will stop the other toms.

And I know someone who fosters cats. The moment I showed my sister Ziggy, she'd fallen for him and, only a day younger than my brand new nephew, it had to be fate!

And that was why Missy and I were in Manchester (my mum is literally just hitching a ride with anyone going down that neck of the woods!). I'd decided to dabble with this whole AirBnB craze (I know, I'm late to that party) and found somewhere literally 15 minutes away.

With only one full day available to us, my sister recommended the White Peak Alpacas farm. It's not a big fancy show farm or anything like that, it's a couple who breed alpacas for their wool and sell them too. It's a labour of love and you can really feel that when chatting away to them. The woman who owns the place was absolutely great with my niece and let her help feed the chickens and got my mum to kiss an alpaca (not bad for a woman who didn't know what one was that morning!)

My sister had asked about dogs on an earlier visit and was told that it was a 'selective' dog policy, meaning that dogs that were non-reactive and calm were welcome, but not those that would jump about and bark at the alpacas. Since Missy fitted the bill, it went very well and all the alpacas were very curious about the little black and tan dog - I can't say Missy felt the same though! She was very happy to stand and watch them and have a really good sniff at the fur on the fence, but she was not keen on having a herd approach her and would very calmly step backwards away from the fence and look at me for reassurance. My brother in law had worked out a nice walk for us as well and, not used to the different access code that England has, I was rather glad for his directions, even if we did have to stop for a while after he was 'attacked' by a frog!

A very quick weekend that was little more than a flying visit. I was very glad to get home to a nice cup of tea, I wont lie!

And I may have indulged myself with some truly terrific slippers.....

Linlithgow Jousting

A very busy day today!

This weekend was annual jousting at Linlithgow Palace and, for the first time since I knew it existed, its landed on a weekend I'm not rota'd to work - so there was absolutely no way I wasn't going.

We started the day early and had a wander about the castle before it got too busy (and it did get very busy!) so that we could legitimately tick it off the castle to-do list. Missy has well and truly conquered the spiral staircase although we accidentally wrapped a few people up in her lead winding up and down! Everyone was in good humour though and she was quickly the centre of attention and got lots of pats and cuddles.

The event itself was much more than I expected. The historical reenactment societies were out and there was a host of medieval games to play, armour to try on and gruesome stories of torture and battle to revolt and enthral all the kids. Between the two jousting shows, the jester show, the dragon puppet and the games, we actually ran out of time to look at all the things on offer. 

Missys rapt attention

The jousts were cleverly done - we had our villain (Sir Checkmate) and our Knight-of-the-Flowers-knock-off good guy and they did tremendously well with their banter and theatrics. The horsemanship was impressive as they managed to not wound each other whilst keeping in character and shoeing off the various skills expected of a knight (I think we were all relived when the heads they were to cut in half turned out to be of the lettuce sort!)

The last standout moments were the jesters and the 'dragon training'. The jesters stood out because they were absolutely brilliant fun to watch with perfect comedic timing. They had the whole crowd laughing and cheering from the word go. The dragon training was actually a giant puppet. There was a puppeteer in the head and then all along the cloth body were holes with hoods on them for kids to go in. The day out was a whole family one so I had my niece and nephew with me and, as they were asking for volunteers, I was being silly and jumping and waving going 'me, me!' trying to encourage them to show some interest in participating and I got chosen! I was put to the head of the group and I think the idea was that the kids behind me could follow my lead/I could be trusted not to run into the puppeteer. Either way, it was tremendous fun running about in circles roaring and jingling the bells that were sewn into the body. I don't think I'm going to be allowed to live it down anytime soon, but that really doesn't bother me - all this being grown up malarkey is just boring!

Although the hubby has decided that I'm not allowed to be left unattended again at these things! He'd literally nipped off to the privy to find me parading about as a dragon, so I can hardly blame him for saying so!

A big readjustment

Just a short post today - its all been a bit manic this end, summer brings out weddings and gala days and I always somehow end up helping out with all of them!

Firstly (because I'm so eager to show it off!):

Wedding cake! My old high-school bestie got married at the weekend and asked if I would do the cake as a wedding gift. I'll confess that I got really stressed out about it as it all became rather last minute but I got there in the end so super happy!

My other big time consuming task was gala day dresses for my niece and her fellow Bauer girl. They started off like this:

I'm not sure who I blame most - my 12 year old niece and classmate for deciding that they were too old for kids clothes, or their parents who let them buy the dresses. Either way, as you can see my pre-pubescent niece suddenly (to her absolute horror) had a dress giving her gigantic boobs (and they really were gigantic on her). As usual, the buy was last minute so they had no other option other than to ask me if I could do something to fix it and make the girls presentable to the public.

So this happened:

Missy found that the boob made a good skull cap. The dresses were basically demolished. The only seams not ripped open were those holding the loops for the ribbon back. My hubby did ask if I would have been quicker making the dresses from scratch, to which the sad answer was yes, it would have been quicker.

Anyway, the 12+ hours effort paid off:

I was at the above mentioned wedding, so missed the gala day, but I was reliably informed that the dresses held up well and that both girls were very happy with them!

Until next time.

A Busy Holiday

Well, we're all just back from a long dog walking holiday (I say just, we got back Friday, it's just taken me this long to find the time to sit down and recap the weeks adventures!).

Typically, we go to the Lakes each year, but this time we decided to check out our own home turf a bit more and do a staycation in Scotland, namely the Trossachs area. A quick internet search had showed us that, whist lacking in dog friendly museums like Keswick, there were a few dog friendly gems on offer to check out.

The Kings Knot

 Monday we stopped in Stirling for the day and basically walked the entire old town. Missy enjoyed hunting for ghosts in the beautiful graveyard by the castle and we found the Kings Knot, an odd little gem of a dog walk. The castle doesn't allow dogs, but we still managed a look around the grounds and got the first ice cream of the holiday there. Despite her best efforts, Missy got no ice cream although I did share the end of the cone with her!

We finished our drive up and through Killin, where we were based for the duration of the holiday. It's one of these lovely little villages were sadly everything closes at 4 - we managed to pop into the post office and get some leaflets for the local area and the owner of the place fell into the trap of Missy's flirtatious stare and gave her several of the free-to-try anchovies. She certainly seemed to enjoy them, although my suspicions that the dog thinks she's a cat have begun to creep in again!

The village was short on take out options but the Cowry was recommended to us and, discovering the pub part was dog friendly where we could shelter from the elements, we were not disappointed.

Tuesday was Loch Katrine. It was the only day of the holiday that really rained, and fortunately the hardest squall hit whilst we were safely inside the boat enjoying our island tour of the Loch. The steps leading to the top were far too steep to even think of taking Missy up, so we were enjoying a cup of hot tea as the rain struck and all the other passengers gave up and joined us. Whilst the hubby and I found it very interesting, I don't think Missy thought much of it seeing as she slept for the majority of the ride!

We then went on a four mile round trip to the Loch view point and back before heading back to Killin for a late lunch in the Capercaillie pub. My in-laws have stayed in Killin many times and, for the afternoon walk, we decided to follow the directions to the crannog that was supposedly in the area. I felt we did well following them, and we certainly all enjoyed the hours walk around Loch Tay, but we could not find that crannog for the life of us! We managed to find a patch of signal and called my FIL who informed us that the island I had previously admired was it, and did he mention to me about a castle in the area...

We gave up on the crannog and rescheduled it for another day. The weather had turned close and we were all being eaten alive by midges so decided on getting an early night for the next adventure.

Inchmahome Priory was the highlight of the week for me on the Wednesday. It's a Historic Scotland site where you have to take a boat out to a tiny island where a beautiful old ruin is located. Missy was a darling and shyly said hello to anyone who would pat her on the boat and then she made friends with a little toddler who, every time we passed them by, would shout "Doggie!" and demand his father take him over to see her again. It was a glorious day and we all enjoyed a picnic looking out onto the lake, although we were somewhat scuppered for a good stroll when we realised that the island was only half a kilometre across!

We stopped in Callander on the way back and took a quiet evening to ourselves. Missy spent the evening snoring on the sofa alongside hubby.

Missy awaits her fate on trial

Thursday was a last minute call. We had originally planned a day trip to Oban, but deemed it too far in the end. Inveraray Jail has long been on our to do list and, at an hour away, was a realistic option. We'd seen flyer for it before and the tagline of 'Fun for all the family - even the dog!' had sold it to us before we'd even looked into it properly.

An 18th century jail, it was a fun insight into the justice system of Scotland. Despite the somewhat grim subject matter at times, it was explained very well and the audio tour was both informative and interesting but not dry at all.

We finished the evening giving the crannog a second go (we did find it!) and also found the castle ruins before we had our last evening meal in the Cowry pub. Missy fell asleep in front of the fire where she chased rabbits in her dreams.

Awaiting her picnic

We had had grand plans for the trip back of stopping in Perth, but decided to just stop at Huntingtower Castle instead. Another Historic Scotland site, this one allowed dogs on the grounds but not within the castle itself. The hubby and I took turns going in and out of the castle whilst we filled in the quiz and then enjoyed our lunch in the sun on the grounds.

And then we were home and Missy insisted on peeing on every fence and lamp post as we trudged around her usual stomping ground - I like to joke to people that she's checking her face book feed!

Until next time,

Bathgate Highland Games

Missy observing the pipers

I always laugh at myself about these things. I dislike stereotypes and I've always felt that the Scottish have had a great disservice done to them by Hollywood. No, we're not all ginger and wear kilts all the time. I've never even tasted buckfast (or buckie as its actually called around here), let alone spending all hours drinking it and don't get me started on deep fried mars bars...

And that's the smaller, lighter caber...

However, give a man a caber and I'm right there getting all worked up if the judge calls it a ten-to-twelve when clearly its five-to. I adore everything about the games - the pipers, the dancers, the heavy games and the whole avenue of burger and chip vans. The best part is that they are almost always dog friendly and its a great place to bump into other dog owners and discuss they best part of your fur-baby amongst lots of very loud music.

This year I went with a friend who used to compete with the Highland Dancing. I've been learning highland for a few years now and it was really good to to be told about the fine details of competitive dancing and to point out dancers we thought were doing really well. We both had dance-envy by the end of the day though!

An unfortunate miss

As a result of her competitive dancing, my friend had also never seen the heavy games. The commentator was very tongue-in-cheek about the athletes and did a good job of explaining what was happening in each game. Whilst the caber tossing is the big draw, I do love the aptly-named 'weight over a bar' event (pictured above). For me, the thought of carrying a 4-stone weight is horrific, let alone trying to toss it 15 feet in the air over a bar!

Missy made lots of doggy friends and we all had a nice time out in the fresh air. The weather held for us but it wasn't so sunny that we burned or overheated. The mood of the event was really good and everyone seemed to be having a genuinely nice time.

All in all a good day. 

Hermand Beechwood

I absolutely love it when you discover a new place right on your doorstep. Yesterday my friend was running the Bing Blitz at Harburn Estate and, knowing it was a 'tough mudder', volunteered my shower for her as the run was literally happening on my doorstep (well, 4 miles down from my doorstep).

Knowing it was a respectable walking distance, I decided to go along with another friend to spectate and, on the way, passed this inviting image:

Of course curiosity won out in the end. 

I made a mental note of the exact location and distance and put it on the to-do list. I wish I could be more enthusiastic about the run itself, but the heavens decided to open as we waited to get photos of the runners and the whole thing was terribly organised - little things from the spectators area grass not being cut (so we were literally soaked through from the onset) to there being only one gazebo for shelter with 4 tables inside. Had the weather been lovely I'm sure it would have been fine, but this is Scotland, you have to prepare for rain in all occasions.

So, partly to make up to Missy for all of us being soaked through yesterday, and my own curiosity, we visited the Hermand Beechwood on today's afternoon walk.

I wasn't disappointed. This is quite possibly the most picturesque wood I've ever found, it really is something straight out of a story book. A quick look on the woodland trust website says that this wood was planted in the 18th Century and, despite being small, offers an enclosed and interesting area for the dog to investigate (also, with it being a little over two miles to get to, the resulting round trip is plenty for an interesting afternoon).

With spring being firmly underway, I try and keep away from fields and livestock. Missy has little interest in sheep or cattle, but I wouldn't want to risk anything happening by accident.

We got lucky and the weather held out for us (we managed to fit the walk in between two heavy showers). I also noticed another woodland adjacent to this one, so perhaps soon I'll go and investigate that too!

Just a short post today, till next time!