Doune Castle

Pre n-th lockdown, we managed to squeeze in a visit to Doune Castle, one of the many nice places we've been meaning to visit for ages without ever getting round to it. It's a nice place - a "proper" castle (rather than just a big house) with some indoor and some outdoor bits. You can see most of it in a couple of hours, but it's well worth a visit. I think the girls liked it.

We also stopped off at a monument on the way back (The David Stirling Memorial) - we've seen it a few times and had also meant to take a look. Now we have.

Kelpies

We've driven past The Kelpies plenty of times but we have never got around to doing a proper visit. So we went to see them a few weeks back - guided tour and everything. They manage to get a half-hour tour out of what are really just two big metal horses! It is actually a good day out though and the park they are in is a nice setting too. We even got free sandwiches at the end - our tour guide had earmarked us as a "large family" so when the shop was closing and they would have thrown out their stick they gave it to us instead. Hurray!

oh - another good bit - they have a load of Lego in the visitor centre.

The inside of each Kelpie is rather impressive.

A shoe left by one of the two horses uses as models for the sculptures (Duke and Baron)

Christmas preparations

Of course, Christmas preparations are now underway. A couple of weeks back the girls put together a shoebox for the Blythswood Appeal, and last weekend we got our tree and various decorations up. I took the Friday off to get the tree - the forest we go to advertised that as being the first day of sales and the girls were off school anyway. As it turns out, their website had an error, so when we arrived we were told sales weren't until the next day: fortunately the trees had just arrived so they kindly took a few off the truck for us to choose from, and we got the very first one sold there this year! We also made it a day out (it's in Aberfoyle and a good 40 minute drive away) and took a picnic. The rangers had set out a trail with quiz sheets and clues that the girls were able to follow and they saw a very nice waterfall. A fun day!

Putting together the shoebox

Edinburgh Castle

A few weeks back it was the school October holidays. Alas, I now have teaching commitments that make it hard to take the whole week off (unhelpfully, the University is closed to students the following week), but I did manage to get a day off to do a bit of a day trip. since we got our Historic Scotland cards we've been planning to see Edinburgh Castle, so this is what we did.

We parked at Ingliston and took the tram into the city. This meant the day was bolstered by an exciting tram ride! Based on how that was received, I think we could easily to a day trip involving a ride on the tram there and back then home again, without doing anything else! However, this time we did get off the tram and went up to the castle, and had a thoroughly enjoyable day out. There was a bit of fear in the lead up to the 1 o'clock gun, but even that worked out okay in the end.

Yes, the weather was also spectacular!

Linlithgow Palace

Another adventure to a historic place - this time Linlithgow Palace on a spectacular day with Grandma. Given that it's more or less a ruin we managed to fill a lot of time there as the girls explored the place. They also had some pictures to "collect" with different jewels on them.

Stirling Castle

We've been in Stirling for nearly six years, and have finally made the long-awaited trip to Stirling Castle! This was largely possible thanks to Granny and Grandad's provision of Historic Scotland membership for us so we could all get in for free and have things like audio guides. Our friend Rick (Lydia's godfather) also gave Lydia some money for her birthday, and a wee bit left from that meant a trip to the castle cafe too.

Just after we got there a children's tour started, with a very energetic chap shouting BANG BANG whenever we were near any cannons (that's most of the time!). There was a room for dressing up in, and some impressive views of Stirling too. A great day out and seemingly well enjoyed by the girls...