Braveheart

This post is complete with educational links to wikipedia, in case you want to edumacate yourself about Scottish history. You're welcome.

Out of the blue, some friends asked me if I wanted to take a trip to Stirling on Saturday. It's only about 30 minutes by train from Glasgow, so I figured why not?

We left Saturday morning and arrived in Stirling to relatively sunny skies and pretty warm temperatures. Stirling is a lot smaller than Glasgow, and is a lot less crowded. This is one of the first things we saw upon arrival:


There are two main tourist attractions in Stirling: the William Wallace monument and Stirling Castle (on top of the hill in the photo above). Unfortunately, they are on opposite ends of Stirling. Fortunately, Stirling is small so this means they're only about a 20 minute walk from each other.

Since the William Wallace monument was pretty much the reason we had decided to go to Stirling, we chose to visit that one first. For those of you who don't know who William Wallace was, he's the guy Mel Gibson plays in Braveheart. Very cool guy, did lots of fighting and stuff.


The William Wallace monument is on a hill overlooking the city of Stirling. In order to get there from the train station, you have to cross the River Forth (I think that's the one, I could be wrong...), walk through a residential area, and then climb a HUGE hill. Upon reaching the top of said hill, you arrive at the parking lot for the monument. There's a bus service from here to the monument itself, but being healthy women we decided to go up on foot. The climb from here isn't too terrible, though it's pretty steep and the trail snakes back and forth around the back of the mountain. Looking at it as we were still in the residential area, it seemed like we would never make it up. But honestly it wasn't so bad. A bit out of breath, we made it to the top. Up here, we could see the whole city of Stirling and its surroundings. The Scottish countryside is fully evident from a point this high, and there are a series of majestic hills in view, too. Directly across the city, you can see Stirling castle sitting on its own little hill.

It is very, very windy on the top of the William Wallace monument. We didn't actually go IN the monument itself. It's kind of like the Washington Monument or Bunker Hill in Boston, tall and lots of stairs inside, but there's no real reason to go in when it costs £5. The point really is the view:


We ate our sandwiches atop the hill, and then headed back down toward the castle. On the way, we crossed over the old footbridge where the Battle of Stirling Bridge was fought (William Wallace took part, which you can see immortalized in Braveheart). It's a really pretty bridge, so we stopped to take some photos (obv).


Stirling Castle is a hop skip and a jump from Stirling Bridge, and of course is upon another pretty steep hill. We climbed up, met a kitty on the way (feral? ew), and then arrived outside the castle. There's a pretty nice monument there to Robert the Bruce which I particularly liked because they carved him a curly beard.


We DID pay to go inside Stirling Castle, because from the outside you can't really see much. Plus Stirling Castle is kind of a big deal. Fortunately, though there was no student price, there WAS a free tour that started just as we entered the castle gates. Our lovely tourguide, Brian, was a cheerful Scotsman who took us around, telling us all about the castle, those who lived in it, and why it's haunted (which is a pretty cool story, about the king murdering some earl that he thought was gaining too much power and plotting to overthrow him. He invited him over for dinner, then stabbed him like 26 times, and pushed him off the roof. BAMF). I'm always impressed at how knowledgeable tour guides are.


One of the coolest things I learned while at Stirling Castle was that the whole thing used to be painted a sort of yellow-creme color, and all the little figures carved into the stone were painted blues and greens and reds and golds. It's funny to think about, because the castle seems so dreary (and fitting to the Scottish countryside!) in its gray stone. I honestly never thought about how magnificent the castles must've been in their heydays, but apparently Stirling looked something like this:


Anyway, we traveled around Stirling castle, and saw lots of castle-y sights. The castle is famous because it was the Stuart's favorite one in Scotland. Pretty cool.

Here's a view of the William Wallace monument from Stirling Castle (it's the very small, slightly phallic brown-gray structure in the distance):


By this point, the lovely weather had faded considerably, and it was getting pretty cold. We stopped into a pub where some local guy was playing acoustic guitar and singing, surrounded by an audience of adoring girls wearing bright colors and ridiculous makeup (but who am I to judge, eh?). We sat here for a little while, warming up, and then two girls decided they wanted to get some dinner. We traveled from this pub to a restaurant place that was obviously supposed to be American-style. It came off as much less friendly than the pubs we've gotten used to. Stirling is a touristy town because of the castle and the monument, so prices are rather higher than they are in Glasgow. After they ate, we decided to catch the train home. All in all, it was a really fun day trip.

Each time I go to a new city in Scotland, a part of me is worried that I'll fall in love with it even more than I have with Glasgow, and wish I'd gone there instead. Luckily, that hasn't really happened yet! Glasgow may be a little rougher around the edges than these more tourist-based towns, but it's certainly got a lot more character, too.