Which is not to say the actual Thanes were pushovers

Because nothing says "welcome" like being greeted with a cannon as you walk over the drawbridge.

Cawdor Castle

Say "Cawdor Castle" to any English major, and he or she will immediately think of Macbeth. In Shakespeare's play Macbeth was the Thane of Cawdor, a title still held by the current Earl Cawdor (the 26th Thane.)

The real Macbeth was king of Scotland, but sadly he was not Thane of Cawdor, and even if he had been, the oldest part of this castle dates from the 14th century, 300 years after Macbeth lived. (He was also probably a very good king, and did not kill his predecessor Duncan, who actually died in battle. It's possible that there weren't even any witches involved! Proving once again that as a historian, Shakespeare was an excellent playwright.)

So there's no real literary reason to visit, and I had no intention of doing so, having seen better castles and better gardens already on this trip. But something totally unexpected happened yesterday -- instead of the rain that was forecast, the sun came out mid-morning and it turned into yet another beautiful day. I hadn't made any real plans, because I expected it to be wet. I thought I'd go to the museum, or Inverness Castle, or drink a lot of tea and read my book, or some combination of the above.

It was too late to sign up for a day tour, but I talked to one of the tour operators outside the visitor's centre, and one of the guides who happened to be available agreed to give me a half-day private tour for not much more than I would have paid for a full day on a bus. So I spent a lovely afternoon being driven around by Jim, who took me to Clava Cairns and Cawdor Castle, and a few places he thought I'd like to take pictures of (like the viaduct below), and I felt like a princess with a coach and chauffeur.

A splurge, yes, but definitely worth it.

Viaduct, with cows

Cows ignoring a marvel of 19th century Scottish engineering, the Culloden viaduct, outside Inverness.

To be fair, they may have just been wondering how Mairi over there managed to grow her head out of  her shoulder. (These aren't particularly hairy cows, but it's still sometimes hard to tell where one ends and the next one begins -- those two cows merge together so perfectly I had to enlarge the picture several times to figure out what I was looking at. Click to enlarge and you'll see what I mean.)

I hate to cast aspersions on any creature, but I'm fairly certain that Flora, over there on the other end, has never wondered much about anything. Even for a cow, she doesn't look all that bright.

Heather

Heather on the field at Culloden.

Seen from a distance, on a mountainside, heather looks almost reddish-brown. Under gray skies in a light rain, the purples stretch on forever.

Bonus cow blogging

I am in the Highlands, after all, so I can't forget about the hairy coos.

They've always reminded me of Donald Trump, but now that he's so much in the news, I've overheard multiple people remarking on the resemblance.

Sunday bird blogging

A pied wagtail fleeing into the grass at Culloden yesterday. They're always dashing away, so I don't think it thought it was being followed, but apparently at Culloden you never know.

Saturday reflections

Old buildings in Inverness, reflected in the window of a bridal shop.

They must not have an over-the-top wedding industry in Scotland yet -- that's the only possible excuse for those awful mint-green bridesmaid's dresses, which are wrong in every possible way.

In which I maybe meet a ghost

They say the Highlands are haunted, and if ghosts are anywhere, they'd be here, at Culloden. In April, on the anniversary of the battle, you can allegedly hear the fighting, and there's a ghost of a man in Highland dress that many people have reported seeing.

I didn't encounter anything that cinematic, but I did have a very strange experience while I was walking around the battlefield. Someone was following me, but there wasn't anyone there.

As you can tell from the pictures, it's mostly moor, crisscrossed by paths, and while there were other visitors braving the rain, I was alone most of the time. Except that I didn't feel alone -- I'd be standing in the path taking a picture and hurrying because there was someone behind me waiting to pass, but when I turned around there wasn't anyone there.

This happened several times, but I didn't really think about it. Then I saw something out of the corner of my eye, something flapping, like a coat caught in the wind. I stopped, turned around, and of course there was nothing and nobody there.

I told myself it was just my shadow, that the sun was probably starting to peek through, though it was still drizzling. And when it happened again, I firmly repeated, It's just my shadow. Again, It's just my shadow.

Finally, I stopped and looked for the sun, which was dimly visible, and found my shadow, which was there but very faint. The only problem was that it was on my left, while whatever I had been seeing was on my right. And whatever it was, it followed me all the way back to the visitor's centre.

I wasn't afraid, which was maybe the least likely part of the whole episode. I was spooked, absolutely, and had a serious case of the creepy-crawlies, but I didn't feel menaced in any way. Whatever, whoever, it was didn't mean me any harm, and I figured if it was a ghost, it had far more business stomping around moors in the rain than I did.

Later, back in the cafe in the visitor's centre, I had a blissfully hot cup of tea, and tried to convince myself that it was one of those optical illusions, where the brain helpfully converts random information supplied by the eyes into something familiar -- a face, a figure, a coat blowing in the wind. But I'd thought there was someone behind me long before I saw anything, and that's something I can't quite explain away.

Names of the fallen

Culloden

The battlefield at Culloden -- site of the defeat of the Jacobite rebels in 1746, the last battle fought on British soil -- is less than an hour by bus from Inverness. The good weather having fled, probably for good, it was windy and chilly, with unenthusiastic, off-and-on rain, but the moody skies were much more appropriate to such a a sad, bloody place than bright sunshine would have been.

There's a very good visitor's centre that explains the background as well as the logistics of the battle. It wasn't just Catholic Highlanders versus the Protestant English, and where you stood on the Divine Right of Kings not to be deposed as the Stuarts had been; many of the Jacobites were Protestant as well (though Presbyterian rather than Anglican), and many Scots, both Lowlander and Highlander, supported King George over the Bonnie Prince. England's ongoing issues with the French contributed as well; Charles Stuart spent much of his time before landing in Scotland trying to persuade the French to invade.

The rebels were undefeated; they had taken Edinburgh and almost taken London before -- inexplicably -- turning back. But bad luck and bad decisions brought them here, to a marshy moor on a brutally cold windy day, with an ill-provisioned army that had neither eaten nor slept facing English cannon.

It was over in less than an hour. The aftermath was brutal; the wounded were bayonetted where they lay. Those who could stand were shot. And the Highland way of life was over, with even the wearing of tartan outlawed.

Today it's a wide moor surrounded by farms, covered in shrubs and heather, with little sign of its tragic history except for the headstones marking the mass graves of those who died there.

Inverness

Here's a postcard-ready view of Inverness, on what the forecast says will be the last good day of weather on this trip.

Skylights

The beautiful ceiling in Waverley Station in Edinburgh.

The four-day guided tour is over, and after a night spent catching up on sleep rather than going through my pictures or updating my blog, I was off to Inverness.