A Palace, A Wheel, A Wall

As I mentioned in the Falkirk Wheel post, I went along on our final Pomona-led excursion yesterday that took about 15 of us to the towns of Linlithgow, Falkirk and Stirling. All are smaller towns between Edinburgh and Glasgow and are about an hour away from the city center.

In Linlithgow, we visited Linlithgow palace, a large Renaissance complex where Mary, Queen of Scots and Scotland King James V were born. The palace was in surprisingly good condition and the vibe inside, I felt, was much more personal than at most of the castles that I've been to. It sits on the shore of a small loch (read: lake) that was teeming that day, despite the rainy conditions, with fishermen and sailors.

Second on our agenda was Falkirk. A former center of the Scottish Industrial Revolution, home to the relatively new Falkirk Wheel and an ancient border town of the Roman Empire, Falkirk definitely had a lot of interesting history. In addition to the Wheel, we visited the Antonine Wall, proving that Romans really weren't ones for proper word usage. The "wall," built 2,000 years ago to mark the Northwestern boundary of the Roman Empire, is actually a 60 km long ditch with mounds of earth on either side about 10 feet high. Yeah, I don't know how that would've stopped anyone either.Finally, Stirling and the Stirling Castle. Most of the castle dates back only to the 15th century (so young, I know). Scottish monarchs, including Mary, Queen of Scots, were crowned here and it came under siege by the Jacobite Bonnie Prince Charlie in his 1746 campaign to retake the British throne. I was far more impressed with Stirling Castle than I was with Edinburgh Castle. More scenic, more buildings, though it did lack the royal bling.