Stirling Day Trip

Hi All! Well as you may have read below, this past Saturday we ventured to the old town of Stirling, about an hour and a half away from Edinburgh by bus. We had heard that there was a beautiful castle there, so we wanted to go and check it out! We packed our bags in the morning with overnight gear, in the event that we found somewhere else to travel to once we arrived there, but we later found out that it was the last holiday weekend of the summer before school, and so everything was already booked up.

We travelled through beautiful countryside of rolling green hills dotted with sheep and remains of old buildings. It is still crazy to see such old buildings absolutely everywhere, whereas in Canada there are very few.


Once we arrived in Stirling, we hopped off the bus and started walking in the general direction of the castle. The town looks very much like the old part of Edinburgh with cobblestone streets and little shops everywhere. It seems like many areas around here look the same.

However, as we walked up the hill towards the castle, we came upon a beautiful old church (built over 600 years ago!!!) and the admission was free! Which was great for us of course. So we decided to venture in and we're sure glad we did! Apparently, the Church of the Holy Rude (kinda like Holyrood) is the only surviving church in Scotland to have witnessed a coronation. The last person to be coronated here was Mary Queen of Scots son, King James VI. You can even see the spot that he was coronated!



The church has beautiful stained glass windows everywhere, and also has a little room in which there are gravestones embedded in the floor from centuries ago. We thought that this was pretty cool.

Outside of the church though, was another incredible sight. The old cemetery. While we are both a little leery of venturing into cemeteries, we thought it would be worth it to see how many gravestones there were with dates on them that are older than Confederation. Apparently there are hundreds:) We found tons of gravestones from the 1700s and even found one from the late 1600s....the graveyard (or kirkyard as the Scottish call it) also houses a gravestone from the 1500s, which we couldn't find. But a sign read that you can distinguish the older gravestones by the symbols of skulls on them....they also may have other symbols that show the profession of the dead person (i.e.: merchant). While we were wandering in here, we finally saw the castle and made our way up to it.










Stirling Castle is apparently known to be much like Edinburgh Castle, just in miniture size. The Castle was lived in by Mary Queen of Scots and her son James VI and his son as well. The Castle is made up of many buildings together, along with the Palace. There are two courtyards which were used for trading, a huge Great Hall with nine fireplaces (for dining), a Church, the King's Quarters, the Soldiers Quarters and the main Palace. Each of them are different in design (being built in different years) but all of them are beautiful. The views from Stirling Castle are also amazing. We listened to an audio tour there, but the ticketing centre failed to mention to us that the Palace was closed (but all the other buildings remained open). We didn't find this out until we got up to the top and had already paid. So that was a bit disappointing...but according to the staff.....we didn't miss much (yeah right).

After exploring the Castle and realizing that there was no where else to venture to, we decided to go home, which was as well because we were quite tired. Climbing Castle hills makes you tired! That is one thing that is good about being here though is that we have to walk everywhere! We should be in great shape when we come home!:)

Until another adventure,

Lots of love,

Rob and Sarah