Daytrips in the Rain

I’ve been to another couple of Historic Scotland properties in the last few weeks and one of the disadvantages of going in the Winter is that there is far more chance that the weather will be inclement. For the most part this is just a case of sticking on a jumper and some waterproofs but I’d also suggest adding fairly sturdy footwear to that list as well.

Tantallon Castle

A point in case is Tantallon castle which is near North Berwick. Now, I have to say that the castle, situated on the North Sea coast, is quite spectacular but it is also somewhat trashed after an altercation between the last inhabitant and Oliver Cromwell’s cannons in 1651. There is still quite a great deal that can be seen of the castle and there is a telescope at the back to look out towards the sea and the islands immediately off the coast but on the day we visited it started off quite drizzly and ended up with a full-on downpour. Even though some of the rooms in the castle are sheltered many of the stairwells are quite slippery and at the top of the castle it is a long, long way down. The day after we visited, my son had a dizzy spell at school and fell down the stairs – fortunately this resulted in a minor bump on the head but it could have been a whole lot worse at the castle.

Inside Aberdour Castle

The other place I visited was Aberdour Castle in Fife which is a curious mixture of the very well preserved and the quite literally falling down: there is a huge chunk of no-longer-standing tower at the side which is lodged at a peculiar angle. The nice part of this trip was that when it was raining we were able to retreat to the interior and admire the ceiling paintings. It also has some very well kept gardens at the back which looked fairly familiar – I was thinking that it was similar to Castle Campbell.

Aberdour Castle and gardens

It was only when we were leaving and browsing around the gift shop that I discovered where I had seen it before. It had been used as one of the locations for the series Outlander which is meant to be set in the Highlands but which is mostly filmed around the central belt with various locations masquerading as the Highlands and other locales due to clever set dressing and TV trickery. It looks like Historic Scotland are making the most of the publicity which does make me wonder what Doune Castle is doing – previously that was most famous for its association with Monty Python and was also the original set of Winterfell in the pilot episode of Game of Thrones (prior to filming switching to Northern Ireland.) Doune is now one of the key locations for Outlander which is probably doing it a fair few favours in the tourist trade (at least when it isn’t raining).