Day 15 - Take 2

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Let’s try yesterday’s update again after a good night’s sleep.

We had a quick breakfast at the hotel before getting on the road. The first place we wanted to stop was the Glasgow Necropolis. It’s a huge Victorian era cemetery on a hill overlooking the city of Glasgow. We walked through several different areas of the cemetery imaging what life might have bee like for some of its residents.

From there, we hopped on the highway south towards England. We made two castle stops in the Cumbria area of England. Both were 12th century castle ruins that were part of the estate of Lady Anne Clifford a 26th century noblewomen who’s father reneged on providing her inheritance when he died and she was 15 - leaving all of his property to a male cousin despite the land entitlement indicating it should go to the direct heir - male or female. Lady Anne spent the next three decades in court fighting for her rightful inheritance.

While she won some court battles, she didn’t get full restitution until her cousin, and all his heirs, died. Once she inherited, she poured money into restoring the four different estates to bring them back to glory. When she died though, leaving no direct heirs herself, they fell into various hands and all were eventually abandoned by early in the 1700’s. While much of the castles fell apart, everything valuable removed and the wood rotted away, they’re still impressive.

After theses stops, we picked a roadside cafe for lunch and continued on our way. We arrived at the castle where we are staying, Hazlewood Castle about 4:00. This was our longest driving day of the trip - more than 200 miles - so it was nice to get here.

We checked in and wandered around the castle grounds. There’s a chapel and cemetery as well as the large manor house and our buildings. We have a small suite which will be great as we need to do a thorough inventory and repack of our bags after the past couple of weeks.

There are two wedding venues here - one for formal weddings and one for “woodland” weddings. Former occupants of the castle are said to have inspired the legends of Robin Hood and Maid Marion so this makes a bit of sense. The castle was also a maternity hospital from 1939-1953 seeing more than 9000 babies born. The whole place has a bit of a Bridgerton feel.

We still got in 7km of walking even with the drive so we had an early dinner at the hotel. Like many of the places we’ve been, they are experiencing staffing challenges. Between Covid and the Ukrainian invasion, we’ve heard that bringing in new staff to some of these remote locations is really difficult.

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Photos

Inside the four storey keep at Brougham Castle. .
It’s easy to see where each of the wooden floors would have been.