10 years ago, my son and I were given a Christmas present from my wife. It included return airfare from Travels number two – Dunlichety Church.
Toronto to Glasgow Scotland, the use of a car for a week, and the use of seven bed and breakfasts of our choosing. It was a one-week ticket to explore Scotland. My mother was born in Aberdeen, so that there was a definite stop to where she was born, lived her childhood, and the church where she was eventually married to my dad.
We picked up our car after arriving in Glasgow. We had to upgrade slightly to make room for our golf clubs. I had to relearn how to use a stick shift, and also to adapt to driving on the other side of the road, as well as all the multiple roundabouts.
We set off great excitement due east for our first stop at Stirling castle.
This was also the site of the events of the movie Braveheart. I must say all of stops would make great stories, but I have to proceed to the title of this piece.
From Stering, we were, we were off to Edinburgh, what a fabulous place!. Then off to Dundee, then off to Saint Andrews, where we walked part of the famous course.
The next step was Aberdeen, where we did everything, we had planned. Onward west we proceeded along the river Spey, the whiskey Trail, to a place called Dunlichety Scotland just south of Inverness. We had booked lodging there because it offered the opportunity to go fly fishing. Dunlichecty had certainly declined in its population over the years , but is a grand reflection of the real Scottish highlands… well off the strip tourist path. The roads we travelled became more difficult to travel on, very narrow, pull off to the side to let oncoming” not very frequent” traffic pass.
There were many narrow stone bridges to cross as well as longhorn Scottish cattle in the fields. We were definitely off the beaten path.
We settled into our new room. About midday we then we met our flyfishing instructor who would show us the fine art and proceed to catch some trout.
Our instructor was a retired policeman from Inverness Scotland who gave us not only flyfishing techniques (were both successful ) but also great stories about local history. His home property bordered on the area where the battle of Culloden was fought April 16, 1746. This was a ferocious war in Scotland, dividing families and selling clan against clan. It seemed to be an an enormous factor in the end of Scotland as it existed at that time. Indeed, the British victory helped create the beginning of the British empire, including word world domination exploitation expanding powers colonization and eventually involving slavery etc.
The Jacobite army bracket loyal to King James , was led by Bonnie Prince Charlie. They suffered enormous losses. The battle lasted about 40 minutes and resulted in the death of about 1000 of the 5000 Jacobites.
The survivors were the victims of terrible atrocities by the British. Such an immense defeat was thought, at least in part, by the fact that the British were the only participants to have cavalry.
Our instructor would often wander over the battlefield site in the
evening, and occasionally trip over an ancient stone grave mark ,example: “Here lies five of the clan Campbell”. He said the area almost felt haunted.
Knowing our keen interest in this, he suggested we visit the Dunlichety church our departure.
This site back to Saint Finan, C. 575. A Church was constructed there in 1569, and its replacement was built on much of its original foundation about 1759.
It had a watchtower… to watch for grave robbers. Until 1832, it was illegal to donate your body unless you were a prisoner to be executed. There was major shortage of bodies for medical school students, surgeons and doctors of that era. Grave robbing could be a lucrative profession.
The church graveyard is an extremely historical walk through the centuries, and is a fantastic place to visit.
At our instructor’s suggestion, we walked around the perimeter of the ancient church. He told us to look for areas on the corners of the stone that appeared to be scalloped out .We did indeed find several of these, very plain to see. This is where the Scottish warriors of old, would sharpen their axes swords and knives before before marching off to battle such as Culloden. On the stone fences ,we also found areas where these ancient warriors were sharpen your arrows in preparation for battle.
What an amazing place… We could literally “feel the history”.