Books, Movies and Random Thoughts

A potentially good action film, let down by a distasteful ending.

I have never had any interest in reading Lee Childs. However, from the trailer, Jack Reacher looked like it would be a slick, well made, action film.

And for the most part it was. The performances were generally good, the script had a good combination of humour and action, the unfolding of Jack’s character worked well, and I didn’t actually figure out who the villain was.

However, I was left rather uncomfortable by Jack’s almost execution-style killings towards the end. It felt unnecessary and rather distasteful.

Favourite line/scene

Helen: Would you please put your shirt on.

Bechdal test

I think a fail. There were two female characters – Helen and Sandy – but I don’t offhand recall a scene in which they were both present, let alone spoke to each other.

Stars

2

Less would have been more.

I was about 11 years old when I read The Hobbit. Didn’t (quite) finish it, and never went back to it. Although I did read Lord of the Rings about 6 years later. (Actually, it took me three attempts to get to the end of that – I kept getting stuck in the middle of The Two Towers.)

So I went into The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey with very little foreknowledge of the plot. Except that I knew there were 13 Dwarves, and given the problem I normally have in keeping characters sorted out, I wasn’t really sure how well that would work for me.

As it turned out, they did a good enough job of making the Dwarves distinctive that I was able to pretty much keep them separate. I never did learn most of their names – I got Thorin, but the rest tended to be the fat one, the one with the funny hat, the pretty one with the bow, the big white beard, etc.

I thought Martin Freeman did a great job as Bilbo – he really does portray the ‘everyman’ type, and the reluctant-hero, well.

And I liked Richard Armitage’s Thorin. But it did seem to me (and I thought this even before seeing the film) that he didn’t really look like a Dwarf. I don’t think it’s just a matter of height – I think a fantasy-style Dwarf needs a certain physique. Not necessarily fat, but broad. Where as Thorin basically had the proportions of a tall man, shrunk down (though actually, mostly not, unless he was in the same shot as Gandalf). It was like they felt they couldn’t present him as a heroic figure if he looked like Gimli – he had to look like Aragorn. And so they then threw in a couple of younger, also slim, dwarves just so he didn’t stick out too much. Not that I’m complaining about Richard Armitage’s performance (or looks). And maybe there would have been more of a challenge in empathising with the character if he looked like Gimli. But it felt like a bit of a cop-out on the part of the filmmakers.

I saw the film in 3D, since that was the only option on the opening night in Cambridge. But the cinema wasn’t huge, and it also wasn’t set up for 48fps. So it was just regular 3D, and to be honest, I didn’t feel that it really added all that much to the experience – 2D would have been just as good. (Update: After getting back to Australia, I saw it again at the Macquarie Centre, in a bigger cinema, with 48fps. And that probably was a richer experience. Although there was no particular moment where I felt I was seeing something different, overall I had a much stronger sense of looking through a window into something real. Although since I had the same sense in Hugo - which wasn’t 48fps- maybe it was just the bigger cinema.)

I would certainly say I enjoyed the film. But I would equally certainly say that it was far too long. Aside from the opening with Frodo (a rather self-indulgent, and IMHO not really necessary, tie-in with Lord of the Rings) I don’t think there were any scenes that could have been removed in their entirety: even the singing, which I wasn’t a huge fan of, probably had its place. But some of them could probably have been cut back a fair bit. In particular, the capture-by and escape-from the goblins could certainly have been shorter.

Favourite line/scene

Would have to be the riddle scene with Gollum. It was the one scene that I actually remembered from the book – even before I read Lord of the Rings and learned that it was important – and it was very well handled in the film.

Bechdal test

Fail. I think Galadriel is the only female character with a speaking part.

Stars

3 ½ (If it had been shorter, I would have given it a 4.)

Not a subtle production.

This production was quickly sold out at the Globe, so when the season finished it transferred to the Apollo Theatre, where it also sold out. Probably because it had Stephen Fry playing Malvolio.

It was all-male – apparently a revival of a very successful 2002 production. I seem to be in a minority in that I hated Mark Rylance as Olivia and Johnny Flynn as Viola. It seemed that Johnny Flynn was working so hard to maintain a falsetto voice that he didn’t have anything left to act with – certainly he didn’t give Viola any of the emotional depth that can (should!) be present. And I just found Mark Rylance over the top – not a drag-queen performance, but occasionally getting close to it. On the plus side, Viola and Sebastian did look convincingly similar.

However, I enjoyed Paul Chahidi’s Maria. Over the top, yes, but then the character is drawn with broader strokes anyway – emotional depth is possible, but not so essential. And he managed to have a very impressive cleavage!

But because of this, the storyline that I love about Twelfth Night – Viola/Olivia/Orsino – really didn’t work for me in this production, whereas (or perhaps because of this) I quite enjoyed the Sir Toby/Malvolio plot. These actors all gave solid, if not particularly nuanced, performances, with the emphasis being on broad comedy, ignoring any potential for pathos. It is, however, very arguable that this was how it was intended to be played, and trying for a different feel is to impose a 20th century sensibility on a 16th century work. (I still prefer it with pathos – and I think lines like ‘I was adored once, too’ do lend themselves to it – but I don’t think it’s fair to complain about its absence.)

The production was in Elizabethan dress, and an interesting touch was that they had the actors dressing and putting on their makeup onstage, as the audience was arriving.

Another nice touch – almost certainly a result of its originally being a Globe production – was that there was a bit of interaction with the audience. In fact, some audience members were actually seated in boxes on the stage. I’m not sure what you had to do to score one of these seats – when I made the booking, I’m pretty sure they didn’t show on the seating plan – but it certainly worked well.

There was one unfortunate incident the night we were there. During the gulling of Malvolio scene, Sir Toby, Sir Andrew and Fabian were hiding inside a frame covered in leaves. At the end of the scene, just before the interval, Sir Andrew was exiting the stage still inside the frame, and he tripped over and fell quite hard. After the interval, Mark Rylance came on stage and said that although the actor seemed okay, they thought he should see a doctor, so someone else had to take over the part for the second half.

Favourite line/scene

The gulling of Malvolio scene (except for Sir Andrew falling at the end). Which is weird, because normally it’s a scene I hate. But in this production it did work. Which so many of the other (better) scenes didn’t.

Bechdal test

Not sure.

The play has some great scenes between Viola and Olivia, and for the purposes of the Bechdal test, I think it is irrelevant that Olivia doesn’t realise she is talking to a woman. But it is arguable that their conversations are all about a man – Orsino at first, obviously, but then ‘Cesario’.

Stars

3

Above-average Bond film, plot holes notwithstanding.

I enjoyed Casino Royale and was disappointed by Quantum of Solace so the big question was whether Skyfall would halt the downward trend. It did. It was definitely better than Quantum.

Daniel Craig gave another fine performance as Bond. I think there is more emotional depth to his Bond than many of the previous ones (though this is as much to do with the scriptwriters as with the performance). And in Skyfall the scriptwriters have let him more-or-less break the curse of the first two films, in which every woman who was willing to sleep with him died before the end of the film. (Though there does seem to be some debate about whether he and Eve slept together – I had assumed it was a given, but it is true that one didn’t actually see it happen, and other people don’t agree with me.)

Speaking of women, there were officially two ‘Bond girls’ in this film (plus a nameless bimbo early on), but the true female lead is M. Judi Dench gets the chance to give a full, nuanced performance, and (being Judi Dench) does a great job of it.

I enjoyed Ben Whishaw’s Q – I think there is potential for a good ongoing dynamic between him and Bond. Different from Desmond Llewelyn’s, but still engaging. (I was never a fan of John Cleese as ‘R’.) Although the script does make him do at least one monumentally stupid thing for someone supposedly intelligent. Perhaps it is meant to be hubris.

The other actors were also good – Javier Bardem was particularly creepy, and I liked how the M-as-father-figure subtext from the books was reworked and explored.

I found some aspects of the plot quite predictable – in particular, the two big ‘reveals’ of the final scene, I had seen coming from much earlier in the film. Although, from the audience reaction, this was not universal. (And, in any case, the scene was still fun even with foreknowledge.)

However, there was one aspect of the plot I wasn’t convinced by. Spoiler follows I could accept that Silva’s being captured was all part of the Big Plan, and I was willing to not-ask how he overpowered the guards. But I reached a point where I could no longer accept just how many people he had in key places, and the superbly synchronised timing of it all. And especially that he knew Bond would catch up with him at just the point he had set up for the train. End spoiler.

Taken overall, however, I enjoyed the film.

Favourite line/scene

Bond is in the Tube tunnel, with Q giving him directions over the radio.

Q: There should be a service door on your left.

James Bond: Got it. It won’t open.

Q: Of course it will, put your back into it.

James Bond: Why don’t you come down here and put your back into it! No, it’s stuck. Oh good. Train’s coming.

Q: That’s vexing.

(My other favourite line was M looking at the Aston Martin and saying ‘Well, that’s inconspicuous!’)

Bechdal test

Technically a pass, although not a very meaningful one.

There are four named female characters: M, Eve, Sévérine and Clair Dowar (I didn’t actually remember her name from the film, but it was in IMDB). M and Eve speak to each other over the radio, not just about Bond; and then later M and Clair have a conversation – or rather, a confrontation – about M’s performance, which, although it does involve her handling of (male) agents, is not exactly ‘about a man’.

Stars

3 ½

It’s been quite a while since I saw a foreign-language film. Actually, we haven’t seen many films at all in the past year or so.

I very much enjoyed The Women on the 6th Floor. All the performances were good, and I loved the friendship between the women, the gradual changes in Jean-Louis, and the quirky humour.

However, I was quite disappointed by the ending. (Spoilers follow.) For one thing, I was a bit confused as to exactly what the legal status of María’s son was. I thought she said she had given him up for adoption, and when she was told he was at school, I assumed this meant it was a school chosen by his adoptive parents. And that by going there, she would get to see him, and maybe even build up some kind of relationship with him and his parents. But if that was the case, I don’t see how she could have legally regained custody of him at the end – and I also don’t see how you could drag him away from the only parents he had known. So maybe you were meant to assume that he hadn’t been adopted, and that the school was some kind of orphanage or something.

More importantly, though, I really thought that Jean-Louis would end up seeing that he was just infatuated with Maria, that he still loved his wife, and that he could change his own life if he wanted to – say, by giving up his job and moving to the country. There seemed to be hints all the way through that this would be the case. Although she was initially presented as shallow and selfish, I felt that Suzanne ended up being quite a sympathetic character – or at least, one with the potential to be sympathetic. And her statement that she was just a country-girl strongly suggested that she wasn’t necessarily going to cling on, tooth and nail, to her existence in society.

So I was very surprised when he casually mentioned at the end that they were divorced, and that she was now with an artist – that seemed to come completely from left-field. I started to wonder if they had changed their minds about the ending – or even if they had done test screenings and changed it due to audience feedback. (Though if that’s the case, I think the test audiences were Wrong.) Because I found the ending unsatisfying, and I just couldn’t believe in it.

Earlier this year, I made my 50th blood donation. I thought this was quite an achievement – the Blood Bank gave me a little badge and a few weeks later I got a certificate in the mail. Then I got an invitation to a Red Cross event at Parliament House.

So I went along, feeling pretty good about myself. When I got there, the woman at the desk ticked my name off a list of people who’d made 50 donations. But I couldn’t help noticing she also had lists for 100 donations, and 150, and a list of bone marrow donors. And then during the morning tea, I saw a few people with stickers saying 200 donations, and even one that said 350. So I started to feel that my 50 donations weren’t that impressive after all. (Though I give whole blood donations, which you can only do 4 times a year. Plasma donations – also very much needed – can be done every two weeks. But by any reckoning, 350 is a LOT of visits to the blood bank.)

Then the presentations started. There was a general welcome, and a talk about how important blood donation is, and the fact that only 1 in 30 Australians is a blood donor (to which I’m surely not the only one who thought ‘preaching to the converted’). Then there was a short talk by a man whose little boy’s life had been saved by blood donations (I forget exactly what he had, but I think it was cancer of some kind). They called out by name all the people who had made 50 donations, so I and a huge number of other people went up, and received a gift (presented by the little boy). Then they called up the people who had made 75 donations, then 100, 150, 200, 250, 300. (300 donations is a donation every fortnight, for a minimum of 11 years!) Based on the man I’d seen earlier, I knew they were going to go to 350, and after that they did 400. I was pretty sure they’d stop then, but no … 450, 500, 550. Then they called up two people who had given 700 donations each.

After that, there was a brief talk by a 13 year old girl who had been ill with something at age 2, and then at 12 was diagnosed with leukaemia. She had received over 40 blood donations, plus a bone marrow transplant. She and her mother both spoke very movingly. The bone marrow donors were then called up and received gifts.

Finally, they called up a man who has made 854 donations. 854!!! He (and also one of the 700 people) has been in the RH program (where they collect Rh negative blood, to be used in a drug that protects babies from rhesus disease) since the 1960s. His plasma has saved the life of 2.5 MILLION babies.

So by the end, while I still felt pretty good about my 50 donations, I was completely overwhelmed by the total awesomeness of the other people. Just normal, everyday people, who are trekking off, year in, year out, sometimes every fortnight, to help save the lives of people they will never know. I now feel slightly guilty that I had to skip my last donation, but the event has inspired me with fresh enthusiasm for the whole process.

http://www.donateblood.com.au/

We flew from Newcastle to Jersey on Flybe. I had been very nervous about the weight restrictions – because of my Qantas Club membership, I had come to the UK with 30 kgs of checked baggage, but Flybe only allows 20kgs, and charges a lot for excess baggage. Before I made the booking, I had been advised by email that I would be allowed to register my fencing bag as “special sporting equipment”, which would make it exempt from the weight restrictions, but when I attempted to do so, I was told that the person who had first emailed me had made a mistake. They refused to change their position on this, so after much to-ing and fro-ing I just registered a second bag, and hoped for the best. But when we checked in, she didn’t even blink at the weight (although Michael was told that his cabin bag was too large, and would have to be checked). So all that stress for nothing!

We had decided not to stay at the “official” hotel for the Veteran Fencing Championships, as it seemed rather expensive, especially for staying more than the 3 days of the event. But Jenny had found a place in the village of Gorey – the Maison Gorey – where a few of us from the Australian team decided to stay. It was outside the main town of St Helier, but in terms of getting in for the competition it was only about a 15 minute drive.

And the accommodation came with free car hire – the car was a Ford Ka, so we weren’t entirely sure we would be able to fit everything in it (fencing bag, suitcase, large backpack, and two wheelie cabin bags) but amazingly, when we put the back seat down, it all went in. (See photo – and note the colour of the car. It doesn’t show all that clearly, but it was a pinkish burgandy shade, described as “blush”.)

After we had taken our bags up to our room, we walked down to Gorey Harbour. The tide was out, and I was amazed at just how FAR out it was. This was to strike me time and again during our time on Jersey – someone told me that Jersey has the second lowest tides of anywhere in the world, and I can well believe it. The below photos show Gorey Harbour (with Orgueil Castle in the background) first with the tide out and then with the tide in. And the tide-out photo doesn’t really give a good impression of just how far out it went.

We had some drama in the hotel room that night. Jenny had arrived a few hours after us, and we had agreed to watch Torchwood together in our room. Just before she got there, the shower suddenly started to leak water. A bit later, it did it again, and on closer inspection we realised that it wasn’t the shower but the bathroom ceiling that was leaking! And we then found that there were no staff in the hotel! (It was a small, family run concern, with not that many staff – though it did prove to be quite unusual for there to be nobody there at all.) After looking everywhere – and even phoning – without success, Jenny had the bright idea of going to the house next door and asking if they had a contact number for the people … which, fortunately, they did. The owner turned up in about 10 minutes, and we were moved into another room. It appeared that there had been a burst pipe. (Sadly, shuffling bags around meant that we missed the start of Torchwood.)

There was further excitement the next morning, when, just as I was about to step out of the shower, the light fitting came crashing to the floor, right where I would have been standing a few seconds later. Fortunately nothing else went wrong for the remainder of our stay. And it actually was a very nice place to stay – the people were lovely, and it had much more character than a big hotel.

The plan was to spend the day seeing the two main castle – Elizabeth (on a tidal island off St Helier) and Orgueil (in Gorey). We went to Elizabeth Castle first, which can be accessed by ferry, or, when the tide is out, by foot. However, we were told that because it was rough and windy the ferry wouldn’t be going until 11:00 (the tide would be out enough by 11:30 or so). So we grabbed something to eat and dropped in at the nearby Radisson, to leave a message for Meredith, another Australian fencer, who was staying there. But when we got back, the 11:00 ferry was already fully booked, and it would be half an hour for the next one. So we decided to change things around and see Orgueil Castle first.

Orgueil was a medieval castle, with additions and expansions up to the 17th Century. There were so many rooms and passages that I’m not sure we actually saw everything, but we had a great time exploring it. It was relatively busy, but (with a bit of patience) we were still able to get photos without other people in them.

We then went back to Elizabeth Castle … only to be told that the ongoing wind meant that they were closing up early.

As an alternative, we went to La Hougue Bie, a 12th Century chapel, built on top of a Neolithic mound, which was itself built over a dolmen. Unlike Maes Howe in Orkney (and Newgrange in Ireland) we didn’t have to go in as a group with a guide – we could just explore on our own. The layout was not actually dissimilar to Maes Howe – a long, low entrance opening out into a chamber with three chambers off it. Though this was smaller and distinctly more damp. The entrance seemed lower and longer than Maes Howe, though this could partly be because we didn’t have someone to tell us when we could stand up, so not only did I have to shuffle through hunched over, but I also had to run my hand along the (damp) ceiling to see when it would be possible to stand up. Much more exciting! Particularly for Jenny, who thought she had reached the end of the passage, stood up, and then found (the hard way) that there was one more bit of ceiling jutting down.

The building on the top of the mound was actually two separate chapels – one built in the 12th Century (Chapel of Notre Dame de la Clarte) and then an oratory (Jerusalem Chapel) added to the existing chapel in about 1520. Both chapels were fairly plain whitewashed rooms: the Notre Dame had a simple piscina (the ancient altar stone had been removed in 1931 when the chapel was rededicated), and the (unfurnished) Jerusalem still had the very faint remains of the early 16th Century wall paintings.

We noticed on the map that we would be passing close by another dolmen, La Pouquelaye de Faldouet, on the way back to the hotel, so we diverted to have a look at it. Unfortunately, it was clearly on the map for hikers and cyclists, as there was no parking, and the road was far too narrow to stop. But we drove down a bit further, to an intersection, and then Michael stayed with the car, while Jenny and I ran back to have a look. It was a passage grave, with a double chamber (apparently quite unusual).

The next morning we met up with Meredith, again planning to go to Elizabeth Castle … and again being told it was opening late becasue of the winds. So Meredith, Michael and I went to the Jersey War Tunnels, while Jenny went into town. The War Tunnels are a museum about the German occupation of Jersey during World War II, set up in an underground German Military Hospital. The museum took us through the start of the war (matching world events with events on Jersey) through the optional evacuation, the occupation and then the emancipation. It was a very well put together museum, with a well planned mix of artefacts, archival video and sound effects, and more recent video interviews with people who lived through it. The focus was mainly on day-to-day life, and it was absolutely fascinating.

We then met up again, and this time actually made it to the Castle! We decided to walk along the causeway, which was fully exposed by the tide. I had forgotten my camera and had to run back for it – while the others were waiting for me, they met up with Jane, another member of the Australian team. So we all went around the castle together. This was a much later castle than Orguiel, but the really interesting thing about it was that the Germans had used it as part of their defence network during the occupation, so we kept coming across German bunkers and fortifications surrounded by 17th century stonework. Extending out beyond the castle was another causeway, so flat and wide we thought it had been put in by the Germans, but it turned out to be Victorian. This let to a small hermitage, which I think pre-dated the castle (there was also German blockhouse). The photos below show the tidal causeway to the castle (tide way out), the castle itself and the hermitage and blockhouse.

We finished the day by driving back to the hotel along the coastal road. This was our last full day of sightseeing, as the next day marked the start of the Commonwealth Veteran Fencing Championships (the actual reason we were on Jersey). However, we did manage to get in to the Jersey Museum the next morning, before weapons check.

I won’t go into details about the Championships, except to say that with 105 competitors it was the largest Veteran Championships since the event began in the 1990s, and it was very well run and enjoyable. The Australian team consisted of 6 women and 3 men. I fenced in the individual and team foil (12th in individual and the team got silver), the “B” epee team (we had fun, while the “A” team was winning gold) and the individual and team sabre. I placed 5th in the individual (would probably have made the top 4 if the Championships had been a week earlier, as the winner only turned 40 a few days before the event), and we got the bronze medal in the teams. A good time was had by all!

I’m now more than a week behind in writing up our holiday. However …

Given that we only had a day at Hadrian’s Wall, we couldn’t see everything we wanted, so we concentrated on just a few things. We started with the Procolitia Fort and Temple of Mithras. The Fort is a bit hard to work out, as it hasn’t been excavated, so it is basically just ridges in a field (with lots of sheep and cattle), and because it is private property there’s not a lot of signage. Fortunately the owner happened to walk past while we were there (collecting molehills, which apparently make good topsoil) and she showed us the rough layout. The Temple of Mithras was in the next field over, and was a bit more obvious as it has been excavated and partially restored.

We then went to the Steel Rigg carpark, which is a starting point for some good stretches of Wall. We went for a bit of a walk, but didn’t really have time to make it extensive. The Wall was impressive, and the views were spectacular.

Next stop was Vindolanda, a Roman auxiliary fort that was originally set up before Hadrian’s Wall was built, and so is located a little south of the Wall. Excavations of the area are ongoing: as well as the archaeologists, they have volunteer workers every year, a number of whom we saw digging and dragging wheelbarrows around. There’s not much in the way of high walls, but there is a growing picture of the layout of the township.

There was also a rather good museum, with interesting pieces, and a video about the Vindolanda tablets – wooden tablets with ink writing containing all sorts of lists and messages (including one to the fort commander’s wife, from another, nearby, fort commander’s wife, inviting her to a birthday party).

After Vindolanda, we went to the Roman Army Museum (discount ticket if bought at the same time as a Vindolanda ticket) which proved to be a bit disappointing.

Our final stop was Housesteads (Vercovicium), a fort actually on Hadrian’s Wall. Like Vindolanda, there are no full walls or anything, but it has been more extensively excavated. We were lucky enough to arrive just as a guided walk was starting, so we went on that, and learned a fair bit more than we would have got just from the signs. As well as the fort itself, the views over the landscape (and of some intact/restored sections of Wall) were spectacular.

After that, we drove down to Durham, where Anelie and Neil had very kindly offered us a room for the night. It was great to catch up with them again.

After we’d gone out for dinner, we all went for a walk along the riverbank, and Anelie and Neil showed us a lovely view of the Cathedral.

The next day, we went to see the Castle and the Cathedral. They are opposite each other, with the green in between them. However, because the graduations had just finished, the green had been completely covered by an enormous great marquee. By the time we got there, workmen had started disassembling it, but it was still half up, and they appeared to be on a break of indeterminate length. So we weren’t able to get any nice photos of the area.

It turned out that Castle tours didn’t start until the afternoon, and there were services in the Cathedral all morning. However, we were still able to see some sections of the cathedral, and the cloister. And it was lovely to be in the Cathedral while the choir was singing.

We went briefly into the Museum before meeting Anelie and Neil for lunch, and then after lunch went back and saw the rest of the Cathedral. It really is vast, and must have been incredibly impressive when it was all painted inside (it was pretty impressive just with bare stone!)

The first Castle tour was at 2:00, so we walked over about 5 minutes before, only to have the people in front of me by the last two tickets. So we booked for the 2:30 instead, which was probably better since the 2:00 had 41 people on it, and ours was much smaller than that. We got a history of the Castle, and saw a number of rooms, the Great Hall, the two Chapels and the kitchen. Because the Castle is now student accommodation, the kitchens are still in use – in fact, they are the oldest continually-in-use kitchens in Britain. There were also two original kitchen tables, taken out of use in the 1970s as they were deemed unhygenic, which were kept in other areas. (The bigger one was in a large room upstairs – apparently the rugby team of the day had carried it up!)

We then went back to Anelie and Neil’s, said our goodbyes and headed to the B&B near Newcastle airport that we had booked, ready for the flight to Jersey the next day. They had advertised as having no aircraft noise – which did prove to be true – but neglected to mention that they were right next to a busy roundabout. Fortunately the traffic did ease off later in the evening, but it definitely at the lower end of the B&Bs we had stayed in. On the other hand, the pub dinner we had was very good.

Because we had left things to the last minute in deciding whether to go to Edinburgh or Glasgow, we didn’t have any accommodation organised in advance. After spending an evening of running various web searches, I ended up just booking into the same place I stayed when I was in Edinburgh in 2006. Though it now has the bonus of free wifi.

Because it is very conveniently located for Holyrood Palace, that was the first place we set off for (Michael had never seen it, and when I went some of the rooms were closed). However, we had failed to make the connection that because the Queen had been visiting Culloden, she was obviously in the North, and would therefore be in residence. As it turned out, she had left the Palace that morning, but it was still closed to visitors for a couple of days. So we went to Holyrood Park instead. In the end, we didn’t go all the way up Arthur’s Seat, but we still got some great views of the park, Holyrood Palace and the city.

We then walked up the Royal Mile and spent an enjoyable few hours in the Castle. There were still quite a few hours of daylight remaining as we left, but at that point the mild headache I’d had all day turned into a migraine, and I didn’t really feel up to hiking around the city any longer, particularly since it was actually quite hot. So we called it a day.

The next day, the weather actually turned Scottish – or at least, more so than we had experienced thus far: it drizzled on and off for much of the day. However, it didn’t stop us from seeing three of the Border Abbeys included in our Historic Scotland passes: Melrose, Dryburgh and Jedburgh.

It wasn’t actually raining when we were at Melrose Abbey (founded in 1136 by Cistercian monks) so we spent quite a while wandering around, climbing the tower, and listening to the free audio commentary.

When we got to Dryburgh Abbey (1150, Premonstratensian canons) the drizzle had definitely set in, so we didn’t spend as much time there as we might have. (Also, they didn’t have a free audio guide.) Sir Walter Scott and Field Marshal Haig are both buried here – Scott has the more impressive memorial, although there were a lot of regimental wreaths at Haig’s grave – I believe there had been some sort of Services Day, or something, recently.

Finally, we went to Jedburgh Abbey (1138, Augustinians). Situated high on a hill, it was perhaps the most impressive of the three, although since the Nave was undergoing conservation work, there was a certain amount of unsightly scaffolding (and some points in the audio tour where we couldn’t quite follow the instructions on where to walk).

After Jedburgh, we crossed the border into England, and went to the farm B&B near Hadrian’s Wall that we had booked into. In our time in Scotland we had only had one brief glimpse of a Highland cow – so of course, now that we were in England, the farm had two of them in the field we could see from our window. They also had a very friendly cat.

From Inverness, we meandered south to Edinburgh, stopping overnight in Ballachulish (near Glen Coe).

This time, we drove down the east side of Loch Ness, along the more picturesque, less populated B862. Again, because it was early in the morning it was very quiet and the Loch looked lovely and misty.

We stopped at Foyles and did two short walks – one to the Falls of Foyles (which weren’t quite as Robert Burns described them) and the Red Squirrel Walk (didn’t see any red squirrels). But the walks were pleasant, nevertheless.

After this, we continued past the interestingly-named Loch Lochy, and then stopped to look at the Commando Memorial (“in memory of the Commandos who died in the Second World War”) and enjoy our first view of Ben Nevis.

We then detoured slightly west, to go to the village of Glenfinnan on the shores of Loch Shiel, where (historically) in 1745 Bonnie Prince Charlie raised his standard to signal the start of the Jacobite uprising; and also where the (fictional) Connor Macleod was born in 1518. There is a column by the edge of the Loch, commemorating the Jacobites, but it looked like you had to pay a an entrance fee to get to it, and we figured that the National Trust of Scotland had had enough of our money the day before at Culloden, and the Glenfinnan Visitor Centre would be covering the same set of events as the Culloden one, so we decided to give it a miss.

Instead, we continued on into Glenfinnan, and had lunch at the Glenfinnan Station Museum, in a converted railway carriage (originally a Dining Car). They very helpfully gave us a map of walks in the area, so we did the first part of the Viaduct Viewpoint path, which ran all the way from Glenfinnan to the 21 arch viaduct crossed by the West Highland Railway (as seen in the Harry Potter films). We only went as far as the viewpoint, where we got a magnificent view of the Loch in one direction, and an in-the-distance view of the viaduct in the other.

On leaving Glenfinnan, we retraced our route back towards Ben Nevis, and into the start of Glen Nevis. We parked in the “Braveheart” carpark and did a short and not very interesting walk. We would probably have done better to drive further into the glen, but time was getting on and we wanted to get to the B&B we had booked in Ballachulish.

After checking in to the B&B, and offloading our luggage, we drove on into Glen Coe and did a couple of walks – one from the Visitor Centre, and then another (better) one to Signal Rock. According to the information board, tradition has it that Signal Rock was the gathering point for the MacDonalds of Glencoe at times of emergency, and some people believe that a fire was lit here to signal the start of the Massacre on 13 February (though there is no evidence to support this). Regardless of whether this is true or not, there was a wonderful view from the top of the rock.

The next morning, we drove on through Glen Coe and Rannoch Moor, stopping (frequently) to enjoy the views.

We then drove through part of the Trossachs National Park, which was quite pretty, but not a patch on what we had seen earlier in the day. We stopped at Balquhidder to see Rob Roy’s grave, and at 13th century Inchmahome Priory, which is on an island in the Lake of Menteith (the only lake – as opposed to loch – in Scotland). A little 12 person boat regularly ferries people across the lake to the island.

Our final stop for the day was Stirling Castle. We got there at about 3:00, and as we arrived it started to rain lightly. The air smelled as if an enormous great thunderstorm was brewing, but fortunately this failed to eventuate. However, it was still sprinkling when we went into the castle and joined one of the free guided tours. The tour guide was amusing and informative, and we really enjoyed it. We went through the Great Hall and the Chapel (where the infant James VI was baptised), but the Palace was closed as it was still being restored.

Part of the restoration work includes the weaving of new tapestries for the Palace walls: they are basing them on a six-tapestry series of a unicorn hunt (allegory for the Crucifixion and Resurrection) and the four completed tapestries were hanging inside the Chapel. We went down to the Tapestry Room, where you could actually see the weavers working on the new tapestries, and read some information about them: the kind of research that had been done, the changes that had been made, etc. One nice feature is that they aren’t attempting to age them at all: when the Palace is reopened, the tapestries on the walls will be as rich and vibrant as they would have been when the Palace was actually in use.

Stirling Castle was the first place we had been to that showed signs of really heavy tourist activity happening. However, because we had arrived later in the day, the numbers were thinning while we were there, and while it didn’t end up deserted, it certainly wasn’t crowded. Even better, by the time we were leaving, the rain had cleared up completely, so we were able to get photos of the views, and of the Wallace Monument in the distance.

We were spending the night in Edinburgh, but we had been warned that it would be best to arrive after 6:30, to avoid traffic congestion, so we grabbed a quick meal in Stirling (confirming that British Chinese Restaurants are still underwhelming) before heading to Edinburgh.