We Are the Knights Who Say NI!

After the Pops and Davilee told me how much they loved the Scottish Highlands, I decided to take one of the many day trips offered from Edinburgh. There seemed to be four main trips offered: Loch Ness and the central highlands, Rosslyn Chapel and the Eastern part of Scotland, The Trossachs and The Western Highlands. I was a little bit overwhelmed because I did absolutely NO research as to the Scottish Highlands and had no idea where I wanted to go. Flipping through a leaflet about all the different tours, it immediately became clear where I wanted to go – Oban, West Highlands Lochs and Castles. The reason why I chose this particular tour was contained in the second sentence of the brochure. “Our first stop is the historic town of Doune, where we can admire its famous Castle, the film location for the comedy ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’. Mumsy had no idea what I was talking about when I turned to her and said “NI!” but she agreed to come along anyways.

The morning started out sunny, so I threw on my new hot pink and black plaid sunglasses (sadly, the black and white ones I picked up in Cali with my BMF #2 Doyle broke) and got ready to see some Castles and Loccccchhs. (On a side note, you apparently need to practically spit whenever you say this word if you say it in proper Scottish fashion. ) We had 10 minutes to wander around the outside of Doune Castle. Doune Castle is relatively unique among the thousands of castles in Scotland as it was built in one century and left relatively unchanged. It was originally built in the 14th century by the son of King Robert II of Scotland in typical royal fashion at the time where it stood untouched until it was restored in the 1880’s century by the Earl of Moray

Next up on the tour was a stop in Callander to visit the famous Hamish. When I visited Edinburgh back in the spring, I noticed a large number of postcards and other tourist type items with this funny looking cow on it. Since (as everyone knows) my Pops is a big fan of cows, I sent him one of the postcards. Come to find out, the cows in all the pictures are really one cow named Hamish (who I have to admit was pretty cute).

We stopped for lunch in the pretty fishing village of Oban. Being a connosseiur of Fish and Chips, I decided to try their version as it promised to be freshly caught cod. It was extremely glorious. Since Don HAD to get dessert we didn’t really have time for much other than eating, but I did manage to take a few photos of the bay.

We stopped at Kilchurn Castle on the way to our next stop.

We then drove out to Inveraray castle, home to the Duke of Argyll. Unfortunately, I was unable to discover if the Duke of Argyll was originally the inventor of Argyle Socks. The castle was built in the 17th century for the 3rd Duke of Argyll and is a picturesque castle right on Loch Fyne. While not being the home of my much beloved argyle socks, Argyll is home to Clan Campbell. The title was created a peerage of Scotland in 1445 by James II of Scotland and in 1892 was also made a peerage of Great Britain. This makes the Duke of Argyll one of only 5 dukes to hold two concurrent peerages. During the reign of Queen Victoria, the Duke of Argyll ( her daughter Louise’s husband) was unfortunate enough to drop her crown, ruining it. If only they could make people forget about this terrible point in history by being able to say that they invented argyle socks.

View of the Loch from the castle

Cows living in the castle pasture

The final stop before our trip back was a spot called “rest and be thankful”, reminiscent of Kirkstone Pass in Kevin’s area of Cumbria. It was a fantastic view of mountains meeting Lochs and made a great stop before we headed back to Edinburg.