The General's Diary: Something I prepared earlier........

Today the weather was pretty ordinary, it had rained during the night and was still raining when we awoke. Chris tried to tell DIGBY, that when it was wet there was a 'no walkies' rule. DIGBY 's response was 'get over it you're in Scotland'.

I decided to visit the Scottish art gallery, suffice to say that Musee d'Orsay is still no 1 in my books.

So let me tell you about something we did earlier.
Last week we visited Stirling Castle, another impressive castle built on a rocky crag, from which there is a magnificent view of the surrounding countryside. I guess that's the reason for its location. The scots have just spent 12 million refurbishing it, so that it looks like it did back in James the 1st of Scotland's time (1500s).
Apparently it has been the site of many battles between the Scots and the Brits and even been demolished at one time by Robert the Bruce, so you know who, couldn't have it.

It was an hours drive from Edinburgh and of course Chris didn't like the satnav lady's directions so we circumnavigated the town a couple of times before finding a park.
There was a cute whitewashed pub nearby, we headed in for lunch. For 4 pound you could have a main meal, one pound more for another course. Chris had the pâté and a steakburger, I opted for soup. Choices for the main meal were interesting, I thought I'd go for the crayfish wrap. When the waitress informed me that no one else had ever ordered that before, I opted for a safer option - Scottish Pie.

After the meal we headed up to the castle by the shortcut suggested by the waitress. This proved fatal later on, as you exited from the castle by a different route and neither of us could remember where we had parked the car.
The castle was beautiful, the scots have done a fantastic job on the redecoration as you'll see in the photos below.