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.

 

 

Scotland Blooms…with Spurgeon Gratitude

“May gratitude to God permeate my entire life.” Charles Spurgeon

These are a few blooms that were outside the Blairquhan Castle in Scotland.

The Blairquhan Castle🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

If I could capture the “feel” of this castle in words, I would. I’m neither talented enough, nor do I think I can convey the warmth and elegance of the interior. For such an enormous setting, those who refurbished this exceptional landmark provided a welcoming, warm, relaxing yet regal and elegant experience for those of us privileged enough to visit and stay for a few days. I can’t begin to tell you how delighted I was to explore the library! Those books you see below? Many were first editions!

Here are just a few captures of the Blairquhan Castle: (If you have the interest, I encourage you to click on the blue link to see professional photos which are far superior to mine below!)   

 

A Wedding. In a Castle. In Scotland🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿.

Well, it was everything you could imagine a fairy tale wedding would include: stunning countryside, a Scottish castle that exceeded our already-high expectations, very moving vows and a bride that her Mama would have been proud of. If you didn’t read the introduction to this destination wedding/vacation with an important person missing, you can HERE.

Yes, the bride decided to marry in a castle in Scotland. Just saying that the last several months was surreal! Thirty-four loved ones attended and there will be a much larger party locally in a couple of weeks to continue the celebration.

The Blairquhan Castle in Maybole, Ayrshire was extraordinary. While Scotland alone boasted over 2,000 castles, many of those which are even visible in 2019 are in ruins or inhabitable. There are however, several that are still spectacular tourist sites and we did visit Edinburgh Castle as well.

But, back to the wedding…everything from the jet-lag being a very real thing (!) to the travel, to a wedding that most brides can only dream of, the event was one that we will talk about for years to come.

We flew into Glasgow, Scotland. Along with celebrating the wedding and staying in a TRULY amazing castle (I will post castle-specific photos soon), we also toured Edinburgh and a bit around some smaller Scottish towns.

After a four days in Scotland, my daughters and I – along with 15 other wedding guests – flew to Ireland where we stayed another five days. I’ll be posting photos of both countries this week and next.

As I’m sure many of you reading can understand, jumping back into the routine after a trip like that was exhaustion like I’ve not known. I also got a flu just before we left, and it promptly reared its ugly head every day that I tried to plow through and stay up too long!

Well, this is certainly one of my more rambling posts and I apologize for that. Work awaits but I’ve missed this blogging community and look forward to catching up this week on what I’ve missed on your sites!

Happy Monday!