Blackness Castle and Linlithgow Palace (Another day, another ruin ... or two!)

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Yay, after two days of gloomy, wet and generally horrible weather the sun is shining today! Having studied our Explorer Pass map in great detail we decided that we could fit in a couple more ruins before driving down to the Yorkshire Dales this afternoon.

Our first stop was Blackness Castle four miles NE of Linlithgow right on the Firth of Forth. The castle was built in the 15th century by one of Scotland's most powerful families, the Chrichtons. With its excellent defensive position on the Firth of Forth it was never a peaceful, stately home, but a garrison fortress. In later times it also served as a prison.

Located in the same vicinity was the House of the Binns, a National Trust property. Since it was not going to cost us anything to visit we decided to drive up to the house ... only to discover that it is not open on Fridays!! Ah well, nothing lost as we had not gone out of our way at all. We took a photo back down over Blackness Castle and one of the outside of the House of the Binns and continued on our way.

Our next stop was Linlithgow Palace which is an impressive ruin (yes, another one!) set in beautiful parkland beside a lake. Linlithgow is where most of the Stuart kings lived and each of them left their mark on the palace's facades and rooms as they undertook renovations to create the most fashionable and modern palace for their era. The courtyard fountain, installed by James V, has been carefully restored and is quite stunning even though it boasts none of the colour that it would have done in its hey day.

There has been considerable variation in the amount of restoration that is undertaken at the sites we have visited. Sometimes the structure is carefully restored and then left 'in the raw', so to speak. At other times the restoration goes much further with paintwork, other decorations and furnishings included. Generally it seems that they only do as much as they can be reasonably sure is actually accurate from their research of the site. If they cannot discern a colour scheme from paint scrapings and/or paintings or other descriptions of the room/site then it is left undecorated.

James V's daughter, Mary Queen of Scots, was born at the palace in December 1542 and occasionally stayed there during her reign. The palace suffered from many structural problems and various sections collapsed and were rebuilt over the years. The palace met its end in January 1746 when the Duke of Cumberland's army destroyed most of the palace by burning it!!

For most of our visit, there was a piper piping at St Michael's church, which is adjacent to the palace ruins. When we came back out of the palace we could see that wedding guests were congregating at the front of St Michael's - why else would there be dozens of men in kilts???! All the male guests looked fantastic in their dress kilts - it was such a shame that most of the ladies did not appear to have made much effort at all to dress up to compliment their partners. Unless ALL the kilted men were members of the bridal party, father of the groom, ushers, etc??

We completed a circuit of the outside of the palace and returned to the front of St Michael's. All of the guests had gone in, but it appeared there was still no bride. We waited for a little while and a couple of flower girls arrived, but still no bride! We gave up the wait and started walking back to the car park. On our way down the hill we happened upon the bride stopped at the bottom of the hill in the bridal car as the driver put the top down for the final approach to the church!! Bernie rather brazenly snapped a photo of the bride and her father in the back of the bridal Volkswagon, yes Volkswagon!!

Well satisfied that we had exploited out Explorer Pass as much as we could (we were up£10.50 each on what the passes had cost us), we set the SatNav for the Morrison's supermarket in Keighley and headed back to England. Unfortunately the weather deteriorated again during the afternoon and Bernie had to drive along the motorway in persistent rain interspersed with very heavy downpours!!!

After a quick stop at the supermarket (we didn't want to arrive at Janet and Jill's empty handed!) we headed just down the road to Haworth. Janet had sent a text to say that we could park out the front, but when we arrived we drove around the block three times struggling too spot anywhere we could park the car. Bernie stopped on some double yellow lines and sent me in to ask Janet exactly where we could put the car. Janet came out and pointed to a spot on the footpath, right in front of a doorway. Of course, why couldn't we see that there was plenty of space for a car there?? We just cannot get used to the fact that people park pretty much anywhere here - regardless of whether it looks like there is room or not!!

Fern House is spread over four levels with Janet and Jill doing most of their living on the ground and first floors. Having entered through the kitchen/dining room and lounge, we were shown up to the guest rooms in the attic and then the wet room in the basement. The house really is a bit like the Tardis - bigger on the inside than it appears from the street!!

We walked up Main Street to find something for dinner, trying a place that Janet and Jill had not yet sampled during their stay in Haworth. After an enjoyable meal we walked back to the house and spent the rest of the evening swapping holiday stories and showing some of our photos.

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