stirling adventuring

got up. took the train to stirling. walked up the back walk, alongside the back ridge of the volcanic rock just outside the old town walls, overlooking all those famous drifting scottish mists, which stuck around all day. made muffins last night, which i took with me. picked wild blackberries as i walked up. ate two of them with a muffin before i got to the castle. magical start to the day. toured the castle. ate my lunch. toured argyle's lodgings, a 17th century nobleman's house full of shmancy reproductions of what would have been in the house which means... you can sit on the chairs, feel the tapestries, touch the china. walked into the holyrude church with every intention of seeing the hammer beam ceiling and scurrying off to the wallace monument, but then i was the only one there. so i ended up getting a private tour of the church from a guy who knows insane amounts of its history. holyrude, in case you were wondering, is where james the sixth and first was crowned james the sixth. so after a goodly long, and enjoyable time, i finally headed down to the bus station and off to the monument. a lovely elderly couple got special permission at the gates to take their car up, as the shuttle bus was out of order and muriel (the wife) doesn't walk so well, and they were kind enough to give me a lift. loads of stairs later, and i know something more of the whole william wallace/ robert the bruce story, although still not quite enough to make sense of it. lovely view. got on the bus heading back to the station, but as i was the only person who actually wanted to go all the way to the station, and as the stop button near me wasn't working, the driver didn't know i was still on the bus until we were a bit past the station on the way to the bus barn. so i rode all the way out to the bus barn and then got a ride with another driver back to the train station. and took the train back to edinburgh and hiked my way back to my room to write this.