Right, so. Having had a wee taste of Edinburgh, we began our travels north.
I had the bright idea to rent a car from the City location. A city whose downtown streets are currently undergoing a massive restructuring to accommodate a new rail system.
Yep, bright idea.
We did however get a Mercedes with only 600 miles on the odometer. And it was very, very small. A true miracle, because so many of the quaint little streets are...yes, you guessed it...very, very narrow. This lovely, black, midgit-sized vehicle smelled new and leathery and had lots of bells and whistles. (This would be not-at-all handy if we went over a ravine, or managed to drive into a sheep paddock.)
So with trepidation, we headed north.
I managed to hit only one curb on the way out town. It's been a few years since driving on the left side of the road in the right side of the car, so it took me a little while.
Our first stop was Stirling.
This lovely little hamlet is famous for events involving William Wallace who fought and won the battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297 against an the English army. The are is also famous for the Battle of Bannockburn, where Robert the Bruce's defeat of another occupying English army secured Scottish independence in 1314.
Some of you may be thinking that you know all about William Wallace and Robert the Bruce due to Braveheart, but you'd be wrong. Much of that film was historically inaccurate.
Robert the Bruce statue (left).
We decided not to go into Stirling Castle, as, again, things were going to add up fast and some of these historical sites aren't cheap.
So we settled for walking around a little and going up the road to just outside the little town of Callander, where we hiked the 15 minutes or so to Bracklinn Falls (below)
Again, I apologize for the crappy pictures. Some of them just didn't come out.
At this point, we decided to eat, and it is at this point that I can say, unequivocally, we found the best food in Scotland.
And by accident, too.
The Mytle Inn happened to be completely deserted when we went in, but that didn't stop the wonderful proprietors from serving up the best food we had on the trip.
I ordered the butternut squash soup and garlic bread, while Mel ordered the steak pie, which by all accounts is standard pub fare in the UK. Neither of these selections was standard.
By the time I thought to take a picture, the 'standard fare' had been thoroughly inhaled.
Seriously. Inhaled.
But I managed a nice picture of the many varieties of whiskey that had so lovingly been 'consumed on the premises'.
Cheers!
Comments