June 17, Tuesday

This morning we woke up to a glorious day.  Tea in hand, I went out on the deck to enjoy the majesty of the setting.  Grieg’s “Morning Mood” was playing in my head.  Ahhh, what a life!  What a world!

Then Holden came out wanting to do some early fishing, and we discovered that an animal(s?) got into our bait and ate it all.  ALL.  We had the fish double-wrapped in plastic, and the plastic isn’t even torn.  Whatever got into it, they managed to neatly unwrap it and shove the plastic bags off to one side.  Every scrap, every scale, gone.  Even the little chunk left on the hook from yesterday, gone.  Also gone was the hook itself and the sinker.  We got cleaned out.  “Morning Mood” was replaced by the sound of Holden whining, “Oh, maaaaaaan!”

So much for fishing.  Holden went back inside to play games on his iPad, and Adam offered to take me out in the boat.  I don’t like boats much and didn’t go out yesterday, but I figured I needed to at least go out once before we leave.

Boats are not for me.  I’m not much of a water person in general … I greatly prefer the woods and mountains to lakes and oceans.  We went out on the lake and sat there for a few minutes.  There were no midges on the water, so that was nice.

We’re running really low on food, so Adam found an alternate route to the town with the grocery store.  It’s about 30 minutes away.  As happens while adventuring, a boring trip to the grocery store turned into one of the coolest outings we’ve had so far.

Dumbarton Castle is near the grocery store, which in and of itself blows my mind.  You can visit one of the neatest castles in the world and then hit the Marks & Spencer for fruit and Ready Meals on your way back out of town.

Dumbarton (from Dùn Breatainn, which means “the fortress of the Britons”) Castle is built on a huge rock, which itself is the tiny remanent of a once-much-larger volcano.  From the top, you have 360° views, which made it easy to defend.  A castle has been on this location since the 5th century.  It has an incredible history, and we’d never even heard of it before today. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view), it’s being restored right now and you can’t go into many of the buildings.  Nevertheless, it was still one of the most inspiring places I’ve ever been.

Dumbarton changed hands many, many times over the centuries.  One of the most famous people who lived here was Mary Queen of Scots.  She became queen when she was only 6 days old and a lot of folks didn’t want her on the throne.  Her supporters basically needed safe places to stash her until she got old enough to be useful, so they shuffled her around from castle to castle; she hid out here for several months in 1548 until she could be whisked away to France.

There is a huge stone wall built onto the top rim of a cliff that falls away into the sea.  I’m sure Mary didn’t have to climb down the wall like Sansa Stark fleeing King’s Landing, but in my imagination that’s exactly what her escape to France looked like.

The kids are always game for climbing on rocks.  This was perfect.

This castle has 557 steps.  They are steep, uneven, slippery and ancient.  The kids complained about being too tired (climbing stairs is boring work, whereas climbing cliff faces is cool) but to me it feels like you’ve stepped directly into a video game.

I said to the kids, “This is what they are trying to mimic with virtual reality and haven’t been able to do.  You’re having the experience in real life that nobody has been able to sufficiently fake.  Enjoy it!  This experience right here is the goal of every video game company in the world!”  This sparked a heated debate about why virtual reality is better than real reality because if this were a video game, they’d be able to fly and wouldn’t have to tire out their legs walking up 557 stairs.

Taking a rest before heading up the next staircase.

More stairs.

The arch used to be the main entrance with a portcullis.

Gardens surrounding the meandering castle.

This building used to be a French prison.

On the top of the rock, you can see for miles in every direction.

I could have easily spent the entire day here, just enjoying the atmosphere.

The very highest peak.  You can barely see Isabella and me standing on the look-out platform.  It was very hot today and up there you could stretch your arms out and catch a refreshing sea breeze.

Holden watching the ships coming in.  This is still a busy shipping lane for goods coming in to nearby Glasgow.  People have been sitting on that rock looking at ships for more than 1,500 years.

Later in the evening when we were back home watching TV, this satirical commercial for the E4 Virtual Head Bucket aired.  “… so make travel and real human contact a thing of the past.  Say goodbye to reality and say ‘howdy doody’ to the sexy world of the E4 Virtual Head Bucket.”  It ends with a guy wearing his ridiculous purple Head Bucket sitting in an alley next to a garbage can.  Isabella cracked up because she’d been arguing in favor of virtual reality all day.  The timing was perfect.  She finally admitted that actual reality has some pretty distinct advantages.

The kitty we’re calling Sushi came back this evening.  Since all the fish bait was gone, we didn’t have much to give her in the way of food.  Adam ate a Ready Meal of pork loin that came with sautéed Savoy cabbage and he hadn’t eaten the cabbage part, so I offered that to Sushi.  It was covered in pork juice and she ate it ravenously.  She’s really skinny and clearly starving — I think she’s a stray.

We have all the doors open because it’s been getting so hot in the afternoons, and kitty has essentially moved in.  Around 11:00 p.m. (it’s still very light out) Josie said, “Sushi has a friend.”  Now we have two kitties!  (I bet they are the ones who ate all the bait yesterday.)

June 18, Wednesday

This morning I got up and looked for Sushi but she was gone.  I gave up and opened myself a package of smoked Scottish trout for breakfast.  Before I even had the wrapper off, I heard plaintive meowing at the back door.  Purrfect timing, kitty.  I had to share my gourmet smoked trout with her because I felt like a jerk eating it front of her while she looked at me with starving eyes.  Today I need to go to the kwik-e-mart and buy some cat food.

Our plans for the day were to go visit Kilchurn Castle (in Dalmally) and the Falls of Dochart (in Killin).  The road out of Arrochar (pronunciation:  go to the dentist and have your mouth shot full of novocain, then say “Al Roker.”  It’s pretty close) had a lot to offer on it’s own, though, and we made a couple of stops just because the landscape was so pretty.  This first one is a small private beach.

Holden and Josie found a bower. Crawling in was a must.

Adam’s Land Rover, which he loves.  It makes for a pretty romantic picture, I will admit.  It’s more photogenic than it is functional.

Isabella claimed the whole log:  “Mine.  Holden, you go stand over there.”

Picking wild blueberries.  The kids were shocked you could find real food in the woods.  They ate the blueberries, but worried about being poisoned after Adam made a joke about them being poisonberries.  They watched me eat a bunch of them first, just to make sure I didn’t start convulsing and die.

A different stop a little further along the road, this time by a creek.  I said, “Make sure you guys don’t get wet because we don’t have a change of clothes or shoes for you and we’re probably going on a little hike later.”

The next thing I heard …

“Holden soaked his shoes!”

St. Conan’s Kirk on Loch Awe.  (It looked medieval, but really was built in 1930.)  We stopped at their tea shop to get directions to Kilchurn Castle because it’s not on the tourist circuit and doesn’t have any signs leading to it.  Our GPS only got us into the vicinity.  We love visiting things off the beaten path because they generally aren’t so crowded.

We got directions from the nice tea-shop lady, but first …. St. Conan’s Kirk.  It was a beautiful church in a beautiful location.  It was originally started in 1881, but was very small and pretty insignificant.  In 1907, a guy named Walter Campbell decided to make it much grander for his mother, who complained that going to church each week in Dalmally was too taxing for her and wanted something closer to her house.

Walter was “a most capable if somewhat unorthodox architect” and “he did not allow himself to be trammelled by convention or orthodoxy.”  He designed the new buildings himself, although he died in 1917 before they were completed.  His sister Helen oversaw most of the remaining construction, but she died in 1927.  Her trustees finished everything up in 1930.  It’s a small but very beautiful church in a gorgeous natural setting.

We finally found Kilchurn Castle.  You park in a lot hidden off the road behind a bunch of bushes.  Then you follow some paths, some of which are wrong, before you finally find the right one.

Walking up to Kilchurn Castle was like finding myself dropped into the final book of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series, when Roland Deschain finally gets to the Dark Tower.  He travels for days along a deserted path, and finally sees the bleak and desolate tower off in the distance.  This is exactly what I envisioned when I read the book.

This round thing was on the roof at one time.  The castle was hit by lightning in 1760 and this ended up in the courtyard.  The castle was abandoned at that time and has been pretty much in this condition since then.

The long and lonely “Dark Tower” road leading to the castle.  Parking is way back in the trees where the path begins.

Isabella in the kitchen fireplace.

“Let’s go left now.”

A result of the previous shoe soaking:  we spent a lot of time waiting for “Hold on!  I gotta fix my shoe!”

Leaving what I will always think of as The Dark Tower.

Our last stop of the day was the Falls of Dochart in Killin.  It’s yet another storybook setting.

The kids took off their shoes and rolled up their pants; time to get wet and climb on rocks!!

My favorite picture of the day …. it captures both her beauty and her spirit.

Holden found a hole in the rocks, and of course the first thing he thought to do was stick his foot through it.

We stopped at the kwik-e-mart for milk and cat food, as planned, on the way home.  The kitty didn’t show up until 9:30 p.m., but show up she did … and with her calico friend.  I got the satisfaction of feeding two grateful cats before I went to bed.

Tomorrow we head off for Islay, an island in the Hebrides.  It requires a 2 hour ferry boat ride, which I am quite nervous about.  I hate boats.  I really want to see the island, though, so the boat ride is something I must endure.