Strathclyde Country Park Caravan Club Site, Bothwell, Glasgow

We slept later that we ought given the day’s itinerary. If the weather app on my phone is to be believed, today was to be the last of the better weather for the rest of our time about Glasgow. 

Its only about half an hour through to Stirling on the wonderful motorway system of Glasgow and surrounds, and reliably so on a Saturday morning. We wound our way up the narrow steep lanes to the carpark near Stirling Castle, its very existance a surprise given the location. However for the privilege of proximity, we were charged £4 which is quite an extra if you have to pay for castle entry as well. Fortunately for us as three year term members of English Heritage, that was our only cost, so it was soon forgotten.

Stirling Castle is an imposing sight even from some distance back from the township, as it sits on the top of a sheer crag which drops straight down 250 feet from one elevation and similarly dangerously on two other sides.

The first written records from around 1110 AD  record Alexander I dedicating a chapel here, and given that it was here he died fourteen years later, there may have already been an established royal centre here before then. His successor David I granted Stirling royal burgh status and the castle was then an important administrative centre.

Through the following centuries the castle changed hands between the Scots and the English, and more often during the Wars of Independence between 1296 and 1342 when it was finally returned to Scottish control. At this point Robert the Bruce ordered the castle to be destroyed so that there was nothing for the English to retake; hence there is little of the castle that dates back very far, apart from its turbulent history. Standing over the lowest point at which the River Forth could be bridged at the time, Stirling Castle guarded the strategic gateway between Highlands and Lowlands, hence its popularity.

Rebuilding did occur, fine royal residences existed in various forms, and during the reign of James IV, the Great Hall, the largest and most magnificent medieval hall in Scotland, was completed.  But by the time James VI moved to England with the Union of the Crowns in 1603, the need for royal residences in Scotland diminished, and by the late 1600s the Great Hall seems to have been used mostly as a stable and cart shed.
A century later, the Napoleonic Wars created a demand for additional barrack accommodation for Scottish soldiers, and much of Stirling Castle was taken over and altered to house the army, including a remodelling of the Great Hall.

In 1964, after about one hundred and fifty years of occupation, the army moved out of Stirling Castle and work began in earnest to conserve the buildings. However it was not until 1991 that a major project to improve visitor facilities and pre-present the castle got underway. It took four hundred Perthshire grown oak trees to provide timber for the reconstruction of the oak hammerbeam roof and one year for skilled carpenters to restore the Great Hall. More recently the royal palace has been restored, complete with reworked tapestries, the documentation of the work forming an exhibition all of its own.

We arrived just minutes before one of the half hourly free tours, and enjoyed this immensely, giving us a good overview which we then followed up with a further three hours of exploration. The Castle covers an extensive  area, albeit perched on the rock, and deserves the good part of a day, something that surprised Chris more than I; I had done some homework before planning the day.

Despite the afternoon being well advanced, we still had another destination to take in; the National Trust of Scotland’s Bannockburn Heritage Centre, located a couple of miles south of Stirling. This is not a museum in the way that the Culloden Battle centre is, but more an adventure for the younger set. The centre is set on several acres, part of the original battlefield, the rest long urbanised. 

The spot where Robert the Bruce supposedly planted his standard to signal the 1314 battle was marked by a mill stone for many centuries, visited almost as a spiritual shrine by many. These days the history worshippers can still do so, but the spot is marked with much more.

To mark the 650^th anniversary of the battle a bronze statue of The Bruce were commissoned for the site, funded by public subscription and a large donation from a Canadian lawyer, presumably with Scottish heritage. Seven years before that anniversary, a fifteen foot memorial cairn with bronze plaques was erected by the Merchant Guildry of Stirling, also funded from Scots living locally and overseas. There is also a concrete and mortar rotunda surrounding a flagstaff, designed to frame key views in the story of the battle, however it did not do much for me.  As part of the 700^th anniversary of the battle, all the monuments were conserved.

However the paying tourist does not come principally for these, although they are a bonus. The visitor centre apart from offering a café, a shop and conveniences, offers an experience quite different to anything we had ever had before, but then that might be because we do not frequent fun-fares or play computer games. 

Visitors are taken in batches and treated to a couple of little 3D animated films explaining the build up to the battle from both the English and Scots perspectives, then taken through to a room where they are bombarded with more 3D battle scenes, all accompanied by the dramatic and inarticulate passionate young guide. Now perhaps this is because my hearing is no longer what it was, but I was left confused as to what we were supposed to do after that. Finally I managed to figure out that I was supposed to stand on various foot pads and wave my hands about to rouse various virtual characters to hear their stories. The star of the experience is a 3D military game, which surprisingly proved to be the redeeming feature for me, and then only because the large nerdy type who is master of the game had an excellent introductory speel explaining the battle with the field all laid out in front of us, and spoke clearly. After that we watched as a teenage girl and her parents battled out their own version of Bannockburn, a variation that ended up with three times the fatalities actually suffered.

For those not familiar with this battle, it was the most famous in Scottish history when King Robert the Bruce won his mighty victory over the English led by Edward II on 24 June 1314. It was this battle, the climax of the Wars of Independence which united the Scots under Bruce and led to independence from England, sealed with the 1320 Declaration of Arbroath which I mentioned when we travelled through Arbroath ourselves several weeks ago. 

It was well after 5 pm when we emerged from the centre, having gained the education I was seeking but not in the preferred manner; I guess I am just too much of a fuddy duddy.