This post will be bar far the shortest as we only visited two places over both days: Caerlaverock Castle and Carlisle Castle.
Dumbarton itself, where we were staying overnight did have a castle on top of a hill overlooking the town, but this was closed due to strong winds and the bad weather on the day. We didn’t get to go inside but is a rather impressive building nonetheless. Instead we headed to the Auchentoshan distillery’s visitor centre, where we were given a talk about the whiskies produced. This was a rather good way to do a brief tour given the limitations placed by COVID at the moment. We left with two bottles: their American Oak and their 12-year-old bottles. Out of the two, the 12-year-old bottle was the favourite due to its sweet and spicy notes. The American Oak was supposed to be a non-smoky whisky tasting of coconut, but we found the opposite to be the case similar to the taste of the Bartender’s Malt variety.
Caerlaverock Castle is a very interesting place having been built in a triangle shape, with its moat still intact. Due to its location on the border with England, it has seen its fair share of conflict before being converted into a fancy palace once the political situation had calmed down after James II of England and VII of Scotland came on the throne. The architecture of this newer, fancier palace was so much more ornate than the earlier more practical, defensive structure. There are actually two castles here, with the earlier, square shaped one being closer to the tidal sea inlet and was prone to flooding. This resulted on a new triangular castle being built further inland, that was also large enough to accommodate the increase in population. It is still a small castle so it did not take long to walk around it before we headed back into England via Gretna Green. This used to be a place akin to Vegas where couples could get married at a younger age than in England and without too many questions asked due to the different marriage laws across the border.
When we arrived in Carlisle, we headed straight for Brewdog in order to have a drink inside for the first time since the start of the holiday and get more stamps in out passports. The COVID rules in Scotland meant that we were not allowed to drink alcohol inside at all, with restaurants closing at 6pm. The next day, we went to Carlisle Castle, a rather square defensive structure overlooking the town. There are clear changes in use of the castle with more modern buildings that were used by the King’s Royal Border Regiment up until the 1950’s rubbing shoulders with the more medieval towers and walls. The exhibition covering the castle’s history was good, giving just the right amount of information without being to heavy or difficult to read. The wall walk provided good overviews of the castle and its features, especially the part looking down into what was the tower where Mary Queen of Scots was housed that is now ruined. As other places previously, a few of the rooms were closed due to not being able to adhere to social distancing rules but that was not a big issue as we still managed to get a good flavour of the place. We didn’t linger much after finishing with the castle as we had a three-hour drive home and wanted to have the time to do a whisky tasting of all the bottles we had collected. I will do a separate post just on this later.
Carlisle Cathedral
Outside of Carlisle Castle
Overall, I very much enjoyed the holiday and were rather lucky with the weather, having been caught out in the rain only twice given that it was the season for wet. There are other areas I would love to explore, such as the Shetlands, and especially concentrating on food. I love haggis and deep-fried mars bars are also pretty good with the melty, oozy chocolate and caramel in crispy batter. We have also gained a decent whisky collection too!
Auchentoshan distillery https://www.auchentoshan.com/whiskies
Caerlaverock Castle https://www.visitscotland.com/info/see-do/caerlaverock-castle-p248631
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