Haggis Adventures - Day One - Edinburgh to Carbisdale Castle

We met up with our tour group in Edinburgh and hopped on our big yellow bus, with tour guide Kenny. He was a bit of a character for sure! The first day was quite rainy, or ‘atmospheric’ as Kenny liked to call it. He reckons the Scottish love their rain, so its never miserable, just ‘atmospheric’ or ‘dramatic’ if its really raining seals and otters. Once we’d had a tour of Edinburgh by bus and seen the sights there, our first stop was the Forth bridge (bridge over the Firth of Forth, what a mouthful!). The original bridge dates from the 1800s and is apparently the architectural inspiration for the Eifel Tower.

After that we stopped for a wander at Hermitage, which despite ‘atmospheric’ conditions was actually a really lovely place. We saw the tallest trees in Scotland, and also Salmon leaping up waterfalls trying to get upstream. The Duke of Blair Athol also had a wee love nest there over the falls, where he could hide away in privacy without his wife ever knowing :S

Next stop was Culloden, where a massive battle took place in1746. Effectively, the Jacobite army (highland Scots) and their campaign for their King were completely defeated by the 'English' aka supporters of the 'Butcher' Duke of Cumberland.

Culloden battlefield

We continued right up through Inverness and to our hostel in a castle! We stayed the night at Carbisdale castle, which is thought to be haunted. On the bus we had been assigned duties for our group effort dinner that evening, and Hamish had been picked out of the frisbee (in place of a hat) as head chef. Everybody was happy about that because Kenny reckons Hamish is a good Scottish name. Plus he can actually cook. So we embarked on cooking this massive roast dinner for 30 people in a hostel kitchen. It was a bit of a mammoth effort, but by 10pm we were all eating yummy roast dinner. We ate ours on the castle walls. How awesome is that, eating your dinner on castle walls.

Carbisdale Castle

Weird dangly ceiling light thingees


The dinner team, with 'head chef'' mish (me = PA to head chef)

I didn’t come across any ghost activity, but there are some neat secret passages that Kenny showed us. One leads underneath the building and the adjacent river as an escape passage, and the other down to the cellar/dungeon thingee. The real kool thing is how you open them – you have to turn a statue in order to unlock the passageways!

The statues in the hall; the one that opens the secret passages is the furthest away in the middle line of statues!