Bass Rock & Tantallon Castle

This is Bass Rock, it sits in the middle of the sea and is home to a lighthouse and lots of birds. The waters here are so clean and clear, it is actually a great place to go diving too.

Tantallon Castle was built in the 1300's and is just such a beautiful ruin of a castle which looks out across the cliffs to Bass Rock and the waters below.

The path there is made of stones

And it is just so beautiful majestically standing on the cliff in pink and green stone. It is hard to believe from these pictures that this is Scotland, but it is and the weather has been beautiful. You see we do get the sunshine here!!

The views from the castle are beautiful, golden fields, green hills and turquoise and sapphire blue seas

It is a really special place to come and visit, well worth the trip and even nicer because we can take Marvin & Carly around it too.

The time worn tales trees could tell....

Today we did two walks, the first took us to a very old yew tree which it is said that John Knox held sermons under in the 1500's - isn't that something? Some of these sermons may well have been about plotting how to get rid of Mary Queen of Scots, something the tree would know, if only it could tell us. What was discussed the tree can't tell us, instead it is all time worn speculation.

The stories that tree could share and whilst it wasn't as old as the tree I wrote about last month which was 5000 years old, it is still old by any stretch of the imagination. The things this very tree must have witnessed, the secrets it must have heard, the stories it could tell if it could speak that it heard and saw over so many centuries.

The second of the woodland walks we did today took us to a lovely burn (stream). Once we got there we saw this this tree where lots of people had carved all sorts of things, initials and dates. One date was 1926, wonder who that was and who their sweetheart or love may have been. Trying to leave some memory for someone else to see and share, immortalised in a tree that would long outlive the person who wrote it, made me think how short time is in the grand scheme of things that we have on this earth, and how important it is to enjoy every single minute of it with the ones we love and that love us right back.

JB alias RM loved, lived, laughed, cried, shared, embraced and nurtured - how lucky am I to have been able to do that.

How lucky am I to have had wonderful people in my life to share these experiences with, thank you.

Glasgow Champagne.....

comes in half size and.....

...... full size bottles both of which are lovingly made by Monks!

I didn't touch these bottles at all, these photos are just as I found them in Glasgow round the corner from each other in the city centre!

A walk in an enchanted forest

Took a walk through a very old oak forest and I do not exaggerate but each tree I looked at had a face somewhere on it! There was a:-

face of a man

A rabbit, was I falling into Wonderland?

A cow slug

Elvis

A tree hag

Chinese Lion

\

A skull

Just to name (honestly) a few.

They all surrounded this beautiful meadow which also looks like it is talking to the river!

and now I see faces in tree's everywhere

Am I going mad!

Vampires & Pirates

These gravestones just remind me of old vampire movies or pirates.

I saw them as Anders, Dexter and I were going to our 100ft in the sky dining in the sky experience the other day. We had parked our car in the multi-story which is underground, gone out the back and then cut through this churchyard which has some very old and amazing 17th & 18th century graves.

The gravestones I believe are so impressive - and as we strolled through the graveyard, we couldn't help but be impressed by their Gothic carvings, and thankful that we were not born around this period as the amount of infant mortality was horrendous. To put this into perspective, these graves were erected by wealthy families who could afford such luxuries, and some these graves were paying tribute to minimum of 8 children from the one family! These wealthier families would have had heating and food, so what must have life been like for those less "fortunate"?

Some families had open air gated crypts.....

Most of the stonework had some form of carving on it usually by way of a skull & crossbones which was the symbol for death and mortality (and if wings were depicted then that meant ascension to heaven)....

and some of the later crypts had roofs on them.

99% of these graves however have the most amazing stone masonry carvings and going through this cemetery to view these is worthwhile alone, although perhaps not if you are scared of heights and about to dine at 100ft as I was!

A hard rain's gonna fall......

Having been a beautiful day, we decided to go for a walk through the Gosforth Estate but no sooner had we arrived the heavens opened and it rained, and rained and rained.

Anders who had not brought a jacket got to use Bill's large umbrella as Bill had a waterproof jacket with hood - sensible!

Luckily too, we had waterproof jackets for both boys in our car and Bill had a hat in his car which Ben borrowed.

Dexter improvised by using the silver bowl we have in the car to give Marvin & Carly water!!!

Both Ben & Dexter were then quite at home in this country estate which was really beautiful, but this post is to show the importance of being prepared and what happens if you are not.....

So what about me I hear you asking! Was I prepared!!! Yes and No. I did have a waterproof running jacket which I wore, but it didn't have a hood. Bill therefore suggested I wrap a lovely blue scarf that he had around my head, which I did and the consequence was that the dye ran and I ended up looking like Veruca Salt from Willie Wonka, either that or having had a very bad old lady blue rinse!!!

Guess what I will keep in the car from now on!!!!

That said, the walk was absolutely beautiful and the sites we saw..... well all in good time, all in good time - like all good stories!!!

God in a bottle!

Edinburgh has some great antique shops, one of my favourites being The Thrie Estaits in Dundas Street as it is really quite quirky (bit like me at times!).

We have all heard of people putting messages in bottles, and ships in bottles.... but God in a bottle - whoa, indeed! Well here is an example of one:-

Usually made by Sailors, Farmers, Lumber Men and Prisoners who had time on their hands!

"God in a Bottle" (actual title) are relatively rare folk art as most made ships in bottles! Wonder what sort of message they were sending or hoping to receive, bottle and keep doing this, and which of these tradesmen made them - lots to think about eh!