Our time in the Trossachs has been enjoyable - we've been blessed with some good, if not variable, weather and have been able to get to see quite a bit. We drove around the lochs yesterday scouting locations and things to see and do on future trips. The West Highland Way runs along the east side of the loch, so there were lots of campsites. We're thinking about coming back with Casey sometime and doing some camping, perhaps making our way up a mountain or two.
Not to say that all was sunshine and lollipops on our trip. We were haunted by a Wee Demon for several hours on Saturday morning. We struggled and gave it our best but I'm afraid it had us completely beat. The Wee Demon is the name of the nine hole golf course attached to our hotel. We struggled mightily against the up and down layout and thin fairways, but we hit just enough good shots to keep us playing. Fiona parred the final hole with a gorgeous drive onto the green. As in many other things, it's not how you start, it's how you finish....
We took the scenic route home, past several small towns and lochs that had us working on pinning down the exact date of our return. Each loch we passed resulted in us changing our plans to include one more view, one more hike or a different hotel. The Trossachs surely live up to their reputation as the most scenic part of Scotland.
We passed through the small town of Doune at about noon today, and as we had no set plan or itinerary we played a hunch and turned in at Doune castle. We've been doing much more of this lately - moving away from days planned out to the hour and just going into an area with open schedule and going with what looks interesting at the time. It paid off big time today. Doune castle was awesome. Especially for people with our comic and historical tastes.
Doune was built by the Duke of Albany, who was an important man early in the Stuart dynasty. It's in magnificent shape and situated in a scenic river valley. But it's the castle, and not its past inhabitants, that is the true star. Movie star, that is.
Doune Castle was used by Monty Python in "The Holy Grail". They play it up to the hilt, with Terry Jones narrating the audio tour, which points out where they wheeled in the Trojan Rabbit, where the insulting Frenchman laid into the filthy, English knig-hets ("your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries"), where the king had a hard time convincing the sentries who to let in and out, where Lancelot saved Galahad from the maidens and where he later laid waste to an entire wedding party. All this pop culture was mixed with wonderful historical anecdotes, beautiful natural surroundings and decorations & bagpipe music for a forthcoming wedding in the great hall. Not sure where it stands exactly on the top ten list, but it is definitely one of our favorite castles.
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