Hey Blog! Regular readers will realise I missed a post last week. The reason is that last week we went on holiday, so I’m going to tell you all about it!
We went to visit my Granny and Grandad, both avid Home Ed In A Shed readers, who live in Scotland. This required a long journey, which had to be by car because of the railway strikes. We decided to split the journey both ways, staying at Darlington on the way up, and Hexham on the way down.
We left early on Friday night, then travelled halfway up the English part of the journey, and stopped just north of Scotch Corner. As there was nowhere else open, me and Dad had a KFC, which I haven’t done since we lived in Barbados! Next morning, after a stonking Premier Inn Breakfast (keep it up, Premier Inns – you’re doing a great job) we traversed the Scottish Borders. It’s really funny when you go up the hill and then come sharply back down, as you get a squiggly feeling in your tummy, apparently like on a rollercoaster. I’ve never actually been on a rollercoaster; this information is from rollercoaster riders who have the same feeling. However, it’s fun. We could just about see the Lake District hills, but our focus was more to the north. The most exiting part came when we saw a sign saying ‘The last café in England!’ and it was only a short drive through Kielder forest and then…
The Border!
I stopped for a picture to send my friends on WhatsApp, and we continued on our way.
It took four hours to get to my grandparents’ house, in Fife, but it was interesting because I haven’t been to Scotland since before the pandemic. I remember when we went up on the train, aaaaages ago. I counted the tunnels and bridges on our journey, and we went over the Forth Rail Bridge. This time we went over the Queensferry Crossing, Edinburgh. After this, it was only a quick drive to Cupar, where they live. I got a haircut in the afternoon Saturday, and we mooched around the charity shops till dinnertime.
Note: the rest of the week will be in diary format
Sunday
We all drove up to Dundee to meet my cousins, who live in Aberdeen. We had planned to meet them at the V&A Dundee, which we looked around before they joined us to have lunch in the splendid café there. This took up most of the day, then we wandered along the river and looked at an oil rig.
Monday
We went stone-hunting. Pictish stone hunting, to be more accurate. The Picts (from Latin picti, meaning painted people) were a culture of the Scottish tribes, who the Romans came into contact with. It was these encounters which demanded the building of Hadrian’s wall, the monument which runs across the north of England. The other side of the wall used to be the barbarians’ country (AKA Scotland) but borders have changed since then. It seems defensive walls just encourage your enemies to come and assault them – maybe they were inspired by the old proverb “the grass is always greener on the other side of the wall”? Anyway, these Picts erected huge carved stones, with symbols and animals carved on their faces. These symbols often come in pairs, some of the more famous abstracts are Double-disk and Z-rod, Crescent and V-rod, and also objects like Mirror and Comb. Among the animal designs is the famous ‘Pictish Beast’, which reoccurs far and wide over Pictish territory. This creature with a curling snout and curling appendages which could be fins or could be limbs. We saw quite a few of these, most notably on the Aberlemno stones, one of which stands in a churchyard and has a Celtic cross on one side, while the other demonstrates a battle scene. Most likely referring to a Picts/Saxons battle, exactly which conflict it illustrates is shrouded in the mists of time. Another of these Aberlemno stones has cup marks on the back. Cup marks are of Bronze Age origin, which means when the Picts were carving it, during the first millennium, were reusing an already ancient piece of more than two thousand year-old art!
Tuesday
Today we climbed the mountain known as Dumyat (pronounced Dum-eye-at) at my request. Dumyat is the mountain in the centre of the novel Light on Dumyat, by Rennie McOwan. My grandparents purchased it for me a few years ago, and I haven’t stopped delighting in it since. I will do an EXTRA book review next week to cover this and write about the book.
Wednesday
This morning I played the organ! As I told you in ‘This is music to my ears!’ a few weeks back, I play the piano, and the organ has a keyboard, similar to the piano but slightly different. A piano has one continuous keyboard, whereas an organ has two – a lower console called the great organ and an upper one called the swell organ. Other differences include the way they produce sound. A piano has keys which push hammers which hit strings, producing vibrations; and an organ has pipes that work a bit like a whistle, making a sound when air is pushed through them. An organ also has ‘stops’ which control how high and low or rich and shallow you make the sounds. An organ has pedals too, not just the one which determines how loud the sound is but also deeper sounds than you can make on the keyboard. I played three of the pieces in a book I mentioned before, one of which was inspired by the ruined cathedral of St Andrews, near where my grandparents live. It was a bit difficult to retune to a totally different instrument at first, but after I got the hang of it, it was far easier!
Later in the day we visited Crail, where there’s a beach with fossils. We walked along the harbour wall and then went down to the northern beach, where I collected pretty/interestingly shaped or coloured stones and shells, and managed to get three skips while skimming stones. On the southern beach we found two fossil tree trunks, and I found a stone with what looks like a branch imprint. Here is a picture:
Thursday
On Thursday, our last day in Scotland, we went to Wemyss Caves, on the coast. These caves were used as a massive art gallery by the Picts (those Picts again – if you don’t remember what they are go back and have another look at Monday and do a memory test). Maybe ‘art gallery’ isn’t quite the right word – if you remember Time Team (who visited these caves) anything we don’t know the meaning of is ‘ritual’; this means dubious origin and either domestic or spiritual significance. Among the carvings are a boat, a horse, many of the Pictish symbols I mentioned earlier, and a possible Romano-British god. There is also the so-called ‘MacDuff’s castle’ which was actually built in the mediaeval period, after the time of MacDuff. If you remember the name, he’s the Thane of Fife who killed King Macbeth in Shakespeare’s tragedy. We then said goodbye to Granny and Grandad and set off down the motorway.
Friday
We spent a long day coming slowly down through Cumbria and the Lake District. This journey was largely examining the map and zipping around checking out stone circles and other features. Most prominent of these was the circle known as Long Meg and her Daughters, in which the story goes Long Meg was watching her daughters dance when a wizard popped up and cast a spell, turning all into stone. The wizard must have had an interesting time studying geology, as Long Meg is sedimentary sandstone and her daughters are igneous granite. Another henge we went to is Mayburgh henge, right next to the M6 and with a huge bank made of pebbles. There’s an enormous monolith (standing up block of stone) right in the centre, and we had lunch sitting on the bank opposite it!
We arrived Friday evening, and had a pizza to celebrate. And that’s all.
Except for the water leak…