Another day - another post! Wednesday, July 8th was yet another day filled with cruising all over the Scottish countryside to take in the sights and history of the country! Our first stop was just about 10 miles from our AirBnB in Inverness - right up the road to the sight of Culloden Battlefield.
The Battle of Culloden took place on April 16th of 1746 and was - for all intents and purposes - the end of the way of life for the Highland people of Scotland. The battle only lasted about thirty minutes; approximately 10-20 Redcoats were killed or captured, while between 1,500 - 2,000 Jacobites were killed. It was a brutal battle and also the last pitched battle on United Kingdom soil. The most important thing to remember about this battle wasn't that it was Scotland versus England - it was the Redcoats versus the Jacobites. Some of the Redcoats were Scottish and some of the Jacobites were English - it was quite the complicated loyalty situation.
The battle took place on Culloden Moor - which was boggy and flat, which meant the Jacobite Highlanders were completely exposed to the cannons and guns of the Redcoats. The Highlanders were more familiar with fighting at close range, using swords, shields and dirks to fight and the Redcoats were far more organized and used their rifles to take down large swaths of the Highlanders.
The blue flags stretched in a line across the moor represented the Jacobite soldiers and the red flags stretched in a line represented the Redcoat soldiers. There were large rocks emblazoned with the Clan names of those who participated in the battle; supporters of Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobite cause for the crown of the United Kingdom. The path to the Clan Fraser headstone (essentially) has been well trod and was even marked off with caution tapes - because everyone wants to see that very headstone.
After the Battle of Culloden, the Highlanders were stripped of their way of life - tartan was banned, the Gaelic language was forbidden, clan leaders who supported the Jacobite cause were relieved of their titles and eventually, many Highlanders emigrated to the United States or were sent as prisoners and eventually started new lives. When the battle was lost, Bonnie Prince Charlie escaped to the Hebrides and the Isle of Skye disguised as a woman and never returned to Scotland - this is where the Skye Boat Song (Outlander theme song y'all) originates from.
A bench on the battlefield had a quote from a surviving Jacobite soldier that I think summed up the battle pretty well: "we followed you; our Prince, to this land of flatness and bullets"... Yikes.
Culloden Battlefield also had Highland Cattle - and y'all, those coos are my favorite thing. I love them.
The second short stop on our journey was Clava Cairns - a Bronze Age burial ground that contains chamber style tombs made from cairns and circles of standing stones. The burial ground was created around 2000 BC... so to say the site is old is something of an understatement! The grounds show evidence of a civilization existing before the cairns were put in place - it seems once the villagers passed away or the village decreased, they turned the location into a burial site and moved on.
The standing stones didn't actually transport us back in time - so we hopped back in the car and drove to Dufftown; the Malt Whisky capital of the world, to tour Glenfiddich Distillery! We arrived about an hour before our tour was scheduled and we were able to have lunch at the Robbie Dhu Café - named for Robbie Dhu Springs, the water source used to make Glenfiddich Whisky! My Mom and I were able to partake in Afternoon Tea for our meal and we had finger sandwiches, savories and sweets - it was all so very delicious!
Our tour guide at Glenfiddich was (of course) incredibly knowledgeable about the making of the whisky and we followed him all over the distillery grounds, learning about the importance of water, barley and especially casks to make the perfect whisky! We also learned about William Grant and Sons - who started Glenfiddich in the 1886! Glenfiddich means "Valley of the Stag" in Gaelic - which is why Glenfiddich's symbol is the stag... it's also the world's best-selling single malt whisky and the most awarded!
The tour was fascinating and I'm not even much of a whisky drinker... OK - I'm not a whisky drinker at all. The guide showed us a cask that was beginning to split and had us rub our fingers in the whisky to smell the difference in the aging process of the whiskeys. I sported dirty fingers for the rest of the afternoon... but they did smell nice, ha-ha! We went to a beautiful room for our tasting and we were given samples of Glenfiddich 12/15/18/23 - and honestly y'all - no thank you. I didn't get the Scottish gene for whisky drinking, ha-ha! It all tasted very harsh and intense to me and I just couldn't stomach much of it... happily they gave me small glass bottles to bring home my leftover samples - I'm sure Ryan will enjoy them.
Oh yes - see that picture of my sister and I? Our guide let us hold a bottle of Glenfiddich worth $26,000 pounds (I don't have a pound symbol on my keyboard) - which in US conversion means we were holding about $35,750 in our hands. *sigh of relief* I'm glad we didn't drop it.
The final stop of the day was Balvenie Castle - which sounds a little bit like "ball-weenie" castle and that caused us to laugh perhaps a wee bit too much! The castle was already closed for the day, but you could drive right up to it and snap pictures and that's exactly what we did! The castle was literally right across the street from the Glenfiddich Distillery and was perfect to quickly snap pictures before we headed back across Scotland to Inverness for dinner and some sleep!
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