The Glamour of Glamis Castle

We've been blessed with some more visitors this week. Although they had some trouble with connections in Heathrow, Roger and Cathy finally made it into sunny Aberdeen on Saturday afternoon. After a good night's sleep to get over the jet lag, we headed out for some Scottish history.

We chose to head south to Glamis Castle, the historical home of the Bowes-Lyon family, whose most famous member was the Queen Mother. The castle is in great shape and is surrounded with acres of beautiful grounds for walking. Its only real problem is the fact that everyone mispronounces its name. Apparently the "i" is silent and you're supposed to say "Glams". OK. Whatever. I guess if you're powerful enough to have and hold a family estate for multiple centuries, nobody says anything when you decide to modify the commonly held rules of the English language.

The entrance is awe-inspiring, a half-mile long tree lined avenue with two 7 foot lead (yes, lead) statues at the end. We arrived just in time for one of the guided tours, which was informative and enjoyable. The guide managed to find a ghost story for just about every room in the house, although none of them involved the angry spirits of the thousands of deceased deer hanging from the walls. Or the grizzly bear cub who sat stuffed in Duncan's Hall. He was a family pet that the Bowes-Lyons' used keep around the house, playing with the children. Apparently the only one with a little bit of sense was one of the Highland cows out on the farm, who took family safety a little more seriously and killed the bear. We were also treated to an impromptu piano concert in the drawing room, where the guide would allow anyone to play the family piano as long as they did it with more than one finger and didn't play "Chopsticks".

After the castle tour we headed out onto the grounds. The snowdrops were out and adding a little bit of colour to the rather dreary brown background. We were fairly excited when we spotted our first pheasant strutting around the grounds. We stalked him for quite a while looking for the optimal picture. That turned out to be a wasted effort as the grounds were infested with them. I would imagine pheasant under glass was or still is a pretty popular dish at Glamis.

The only thing that took a little of the shine off the castle for me was the name of the current Earl. After Duncan's and Ferguses and all sorts of other good, regal Scottish names they now have a Michael. And a Toby is also in line somewhere. I think if you're an Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne your name should carry more weight than Toby.