What now? Scotland to Iceland 6

When I last wrote about our Scotland to Iceland trip, we were in Greenock port with a hole in the hull of the ship. Adventure Canada is extremely good at changing plans on the fly so they got busy and arranged a couple of tours of the local area for us.

On Thursday June 15 we boarded buses and headed for Stirling Castle. It was another scorcher and the heat radiated off the cobblestones inside the courtyard of the castle. I didn’t feel like taking a tour so I wandered around on my own, did a couple of drawings and tried to stay relatively cool. There were many interesting exhibits but the one at which I spent the most time was one on musical instruments of the time. There were various mock-ups of instruments that you could play and buttons to push that gave brief snippets of music played on the historical instruments. There were several young kids there and we politely took turns at the various stations.

I wandered the gardens and climbed up to the top of the castle for a view of the surrounding countryside. Not being much of a history buff I’ll leave it to you if you’d like to learn more about the history of the castle. https://www.stirlingcastle.scot/discover/about-the-castle/

We returned to the ship, cooled off a bit and then watched some delightful Scottish dancers. The dancers ranged in age from 5 or 6 to teenagers. I enjoyed watching the younger ones who were simultaneously having fun and regarding their performance as a very important occasion. We were hoping to be able to sail that night but it was to be another day of land based adventures before we actually cast off.

Seeking shade

Musical exhibit

Shaft of sunlight underground

Rose in the castle gardens

View from the top of the castle