Discovering Ancient Scotland

My husband and I have wanted to visit Scotland for years. We dreamed of discovering ancient Scotland castle ruins and prehistoric stone circles for ourselves. Our fingers itched to touch the stones and our feet wanted to wander the land where historic battles took place. Our dreams of discovering ancient Scotland have finally come true and we began our many adventures in 2002. We've had the privilege of discovering so much more of ancient Scotland than we ever dreamed possible.

On the following pages of my little blog are some of our driving tours of Scotland and listings of ancient sites we found along the way.

Scotland is a land permeated with legend and romance. You'll discover mountains and glens, lochs and heather covered moors, skirling bagpipes and twirling kilts, pastel bathed houses and gray stone cottages, rivers and streams filled with trout and salmon. It's where eagles and deer run free. Lush green meadows are filled with sheep. You can hear the sound of Gaelic, admire the misty blue hills, and attend a Highland Gathering. It's evocative sites and ruined castles standing amid heather and bracken speak of a past steeped in adventure, epic battles, conspiracy and intrigue. Scotland is a place where you can walk into an abbey, a castle, a Roman fort, a prehistoric stone circle and you'll soon find that seeing and touching these structures have the power to take you back in time.

These are the images we had formed in our minds before our first trip to Scotland based on years of reading history books, travel guide books, and watching hours upon hours of documentaries and movies about Scotland. We wanted to experience it all but our time was limited to two weeks. We knew that Edinburgh was a must see with it's historic Edinburgh Castle at one end of the Royal Mile and Holyrood at the other. Next on the list was driving into the north-eastern countryside to tour the Castle Trail and Whisky Trail. The final thing on our list of "must-see" was attending a Highland Gathering and we chose the Braemar Highland Games, which takes place the first weekend of September.

We spent three days in Edinburgh visiting everything that we possibly could in that amount of time. We even went on a ghost tour our final evening there which was run by the Witchery Tours. Very entertaining and informative. We stayed at a bed and breakfast only a mile from the Royal Mile so we walked everywhere.

We then rented a car and drove north to Aberdeenshire and Castle Trail country where we stayed for one week using self-catering accommodation, which I highly recommend. We have stayed in Bed and Breakfasts, Guest Houses, large hotels, and self-catering during our trips to Scotland and we have enjoyed them all, really. But the most relaxing for us is self-catering. With self-catering you can rent a cottage, manor house, gate house, or even a castle for a week and use this as your "home" base while touring a certain region. We also find that in most cases it is cheaper than staying in a bed and breakfast or guest house and you don't have to keep packing and unpacking your suitcases. Self-catering also makes us feel a little bit like a "local" because we shop in town as the locals do and visit with them along the way. We become a regular face in the all of the shops in the village and are made to feel very welcome. We tend to use the bed and breakfast or guest house option for the in-between road trips when we are driving from one part of the country to the other.

After our week in Aberdeenshire we spent two days driving back south to Edinburgh visiting antique shops and small villages along the way. We absolutely did not want to leave this beautiful country and we knew that we'd be back.

Returning home with our interest peaked, we began to study deeper into Scotland's history. We realized how much we'd overlooked on our first visit. We decided we needed to return to Scotland as often as possible to tour it's length and breadth. So far we've toured the South and Borders region, central region including Argyll, Perthshire, and Fife, the northeast, the road to the isles and western Highlands. We have yet to tour the northern Highlands but we will be back! We feel that we have only scratched the surface of Scotland's history.

We've made it a point to return every year and hope to some day fulfill our dream of living there. Scotland is a must see for everyone and an unforgettable experience. Each time I visit I am moved beyond words. I feel a strong connection with the land, history, and people, a feeling of "home" always comes over me when I arrive, and tears come to my eyes when I have to leave.