Edinburgh Castle🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Edinburgh Castle – Defender of the Nation

After landing in Glasgow, we traveled to Edinburgh to see this extraordinary castle. Due to travel and having to get to the wedding venue in Maybole, Ayrshire, we didn’t spend nearly as much time as required to really see all the extraordinary history on this particular Scotland site.

This castle has housed royalty, prisoners and served as a major military fortress. Merely driving up to the site is captivating. The structure itself is imposing and being up on Castle Hill makes it a view worth staring at for a good long while.

A few of the highlights of this castle: “…it was home to kings and queens for many centuries.” Built on a hill, it had tremendous military advantage (even if it was seized in just 30 minutes back in 1639).  “The castle is the most besieged place in Britain.”

One very long line we did not wait in was for the Honours of Scotland. These are the crown jewels and are “the oldest Royal Regalia in Britain”. “The crown was made for James V, who first wore it at the coronation of Queen Mary of Guise in 1540. Mary Queen of Scots was the first to be crowned using the new crown and sceptre together, in 1543.”

If you are fortunate to visit Edinburgh Castle someday, plan several hours if you really want to get your admission’s worth and fully experience the characters, reenactments and several buildings to enter.

This is the farewell post to Scotland…next time I’ll show some of the highlights of our time in Ireland.