The Princess and her castles

(part1 of a much delayed blog entry about my UK trip)

When friends talk about wanting to see Europe, my only comment would be, “Ako, gusto ko makakita ng castle sa Scotland! Scotland ha, hindi England.” I wasn’t really interested in seeing anything else except an actual Scottish castle. I am ashamed to admit, it’s because of all those historical romance novels I read when I was young (er). I find it all interesting – the walled cities and sieges, the towers and moats. I can imagine cold walls and warm fires and heavy draperies. And seeing a Scottish castle seemed like impossible and it felt nice having something to dream about.

So it was really a dream come true for me – when Bob was assigned in Scotland for work and I had a chance to visit him. Never mind that I was pregnant! I was going to make that trip!!! I was on my second trimester then and Belly was very much agreeable – no nausea at all and my appetite was back. Guess she wanted to see the castles too.

For the first week, I stayed with Bob in Aberdeen, on the northern part of UK. Around Aberdeen itself I was able to visit Crathes Castle, a small working castle and one of my favorites, the ruins of Dunnottar Castle. Dunnottar is a castle on a cliff by the North Sea. We reached the place late afternoon so it was windy cold already. The waves were loudly crashing on the rocks and there were black birds circling the ruins so the view was romantically scary. Because of its location, the owners found it hard to maintain so at one point, they decided to leave and the castle fell into ruins battered by the weather.

From Aberdeen we went to Edinburgh where I saw my most favorite castle of all – the Edinburgh Castle . It’s a huge castle that overlooks the city. We spent an entire day going around the castle – there was so much to see coz there was so much history there! I got so into the lives of Mary Queen of Scots and Queen Elizabeth I that I started reading their biographies then.

And lastly, before heading off to London, we headed to Inverness to see the Loch Ness and the ruins of the Urquhart Castle . It was raining that day so the loch was foggy and it was hard to explore the ruins. And after Edinburgh, crumbled castle walls didn’t hold much appeal to me anymore.

I wanted to see Balmoral Castle as well but it was closed to the public coz the Queen was there for the summer. But I guess it was okay – I would have been happy to see just one Scottish castle so seeing four is more than enough. :)