Historical Fiction

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Monday November 20, 2006 - Today Steve and I drove to Culloden after he made breakfast. This boy is domestic! Last year I read a series of book that took place in Scotland, in the Highlands, that my friend Kari gave me to borrow. I absolutely fell in love with the books and the characters, gave them to my friend Lynn for Christmas, and ever since we have been wanting to go to Scotland. The main character fights in the war that took place in Culloden against the English, when Bonnie Prince Charlie was trying to reclaim the Scottish throne. Well, the English won out but at least I got to visit the battlefield where my fictional character fought a fierce battle. We walked around the visitor's center while it was raining, and I did some reading up on the history, and there was even a little film that was well done and highly informative.

When the weather got better, we went outside to the battlefield itself and walked the grounds. There are signs that point out where each Scottish clan fought, and I got to see where Jamie Fraser would have been if he, you know, really existed. Anyway, the books may have fictional characters, but being a historical fiction, they are a good way for me personally to get interested in the general history of a place. The land there was beautiful and generally untouched, so it is much like it was 200 years ago. It is very wet and boggy and this is partly what defeated the Scots in the end - they weren't able to use their scary Highland Charge due to the wetness of the land and they had the sleet and snow blowing right into their eyes. Not an ideal location for a battle really. After the walk around we had some tea and coffee inside, and I looked around the gift shop where I couldn't help but buy myself a Celtic cross necklace and a simple silver bangle bracelet. I say silver but neither piece is real silver, just fun jewelry that would remind me of my trip.

From here we drove to a nearby car dealership in Inverness. Steve has been planning to trade his car in for another and so we stopped in for him to make arrangements to do so. I spent most of my time reading my book in the people-not-buying-a-car section, and he went out to take his new car for a test drive. They took care of all the paperwork and he will get his new car on Saturday. What kind of car is it you ask? Silver.

Our next stop was Drumnadrochit, a small town just on Loch Ness. It was getting dark and raining when we arrived, but I was able to see a little bit of the loch as we drove by. We decided to stay at a hotel that night so we could spend some time seeing Loch Ness the next day. We stayed in the Drumnadrochit hotel, or something with a very similar name, which is located right next to one of the main displays on the loch and the possible monster that dwells within. The evening was quiet and we went to find a petrol (gas) station to fill up, and Steve picked up some sandwiches and snacks to tide us over until the restaurant opened for dinner, but the sandwiches filled us up so we just stayed in and watched some tv before bed. I tried reading (prepare yourself for a long sentence) but there was a program on about a man who runs a farm and there were all kinds of interesting things happening like one cow who had a stillbirth and another mother having twins and then trying to get the first mom to accept one of the twins by skinning her dead calf and putting the other smaller twin in that calves skin to give it a smell the mom would accept. Like I said, interesting. And to top it off, there sheep were giving birth too, sometimes (you guessed it) problematically. It was a good night.

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