My time in Scotland

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Early the next morning I woke up and we went to the train station to catch the train to Edinburgh which is the capital of Scotland. We had breakfast on the train. It took about five hours to get to Edinburgh. When we got there in the afternoon we walked on the Royal Mile which is a medieval street leading to the castle. My Dad went to collect the rental car and me and Jude waited and had something to eat. When my Dad came back with the car, we drove to the coast, to a fishing village called St. Abbs where we had afternoon tea. Then we went on a walk along the cliffs above the village. There were sheep on the hillside and when I shouted out something I could hear my echo. The sheep all went baaaa and one of the cows went mooo! There were lots of seabirds and when we went down to the rockpools I found a jellyfish.

Then we drove to Borthwick Castle where we were going to stay for the next two days. Borthwick Castle was built in the 1400s. Mary Queens of Scotts used to live there. Oliver Cromwell attacked the castle once and there is a big hole in one of the walls where he bombarded it with a cannon but the castle walls are so thick, it didn’t get through. When we arrived at the castle there were rabbits in the garden. I immediately chased them away. We checked in. There was a great hall with a big fireplace. To get to our bedchamber we had to go up a spiral staircase. Our bedchamber had walls about three metres thick. I found a door with a secret passageway behind a cupboard. You had to go through a little doorway to get to our bathroom. That night we had dinner at a local restaurant.

The next day we had breakfast in the great hall. Then I chased rabbits for a while, but it was time to go out and my Dad said he would catch me a rabbit later. Then we drove to Stirling Castle. Stirling Castle is one of the best preserved castles in Scotland. There has been a castle there for about 900 years but when Robert the Bruce beat the English at the battle of Bannockburn in the 14th century he had it destroyed then it was rebuilt. The castle had a curtain wall which is two sets of walls and we walked around both of them. There were hills up to the first wall and I slid down them. We saw a Scottish Guard and a Knight. We saw tapestries about the hunt for the unicorn which is part of the folklore in Scotland. They are recreating tapestries at Stirling Castle which take a long time to do and a lot of money. If you donate ten pounds to the tapestry fund it will only create about one square centimeter of the tapestry. We went to the shop and I got a bow and arrow.

Then we started to drive back to the castle. We stopped at a garden centre called Dobby’s Garden Centre. It had a pets section and my Dad found some rabbits and he picked one up out of its cage and said ‘there you are I have caught you a rabbit’. I thought he was cheating because I wanted him to catch me a wild rabbit. He said it had tried to get away and he had grabbed it by its back legs. We then went to the plant section and I saw my favourite plants, moving ones called sensitive plants and Venus fly traps. When we got back to the castle my Dad and Jude sat by the fire. I went to look for rabbits in the rain and I nearly caught one that I had trapped behind a rock but it slipped away between my fingers.

The next morning it was time to leave the castle. We drove to a town called Peebles and on the way we stopped on the high moors where there were lots of sheep. I chased the sheep in the rain for a while and by the time I had stopped, my legs were so cold they had turned numb. We stopped for lunch in Peebles and then we drove to Edinburgh where we stayed the night at the Travelodge off the Royal Mile.

In the evening we went on the City of the Dead Tour. The earlier one was cancelled so we had to wait until ten o' clock which was very late. I offered to be a volunteer so I got to go for free. Our guide told us that the City used to be very small and that there were plague pits in Edinburgh and she talked about witchcraft and how witches were tortured and I volunteered to show the others how the witches were tortured by pretending to be one of the people who was tried as a witch and have my fingers crushed with thumbscrews. After that we walked to the bottom of the hill.

She told us how when there were 80,000 people living in this very small city of tall buildings, there was no plumbing and people threw all their waste out of the windows of the high buildings and shouted ‘guardeloo’ to warn people below that the sewage was being thrown out.

Then we went to Greyfriars Cemetery. We were told about Greyfriars Bobby, a dog who was so faithful to his master he kept coming back to the cemetery after his master had been buried. But his master had been buried in another cemetery, and he was probably just coming back because he could sleep under the gravestones and all the local people fed him. The guide said there were about 400,000 people buried in this cemetery and most didn’t have gravestones and we were standing on a hill of bones. She said some people were buried alive accidentally and they had a string inside their coffin attached to a bell above ground they could ring if they woke up when they had been buried. This is where the expression ‘saved by the bell’ comes from.

Then we went to the part of the cemetery where the bad people were buried and we were told about two people who used to kill people just to sell their bodies for medical research. I wanted to volunteer for this but was told that I couldn’t because I had already volunteered. Then we went into the Covenanters Prison, part of the graveyard that is locked to the public because of the strange and unexplained things that have happened there. It is supposed to be haunted by a poltergeist, a type of ghost which they say has attacked hundreds of people. We were allowed into the black mausoleum for ten minutes. It is supposed to be the most haunted place in the prison. It is dark and cold and very scary. Lots of people who go on the tour report very strange happenings when they are in there including being touched or finding the next morning they have scratches or bruises. But nothing happened to us.

Then it was time to go to bed as it was very late. It had even got dark.

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Photos

Borthwick Castle
This is the castle we stayed in

The spiral staircase
We had to climb this staircase to get to our room

Comments

[Mike Coates]

Hi
Hi Liam, Just wanted to say hello and thank you for including me in on your travel blog address list. I've really enjoyed reading about your travels and seeing the pictures. Putting it together must be a lot of work, but its worth it! Best wishes, Mike (the one in Chicago)

[Mr. Brown]

Your Scottish visit
What an incredible page Liam. I enjoyed reading of your adventures in Scotland. The great halls look very impressive and there are some very special photographs of you enjoying yourself. It was great to hear about Bobby and the "Saved by the Bell" Can you remember me talking about this in class previously? You painted a very clear picture with you recount. Great work Liam. I'm enjoying your adventures. Did you try out the secret passage? Mr B.