A Trip to the Castle

Isn't it so often the case that whatever visitor attractions you live near, you hardly ever vist?!

I have been living in or around the Edinburgh area for over 15 years and have only been to visit the famous castle a handful of times.

With James having done his Juniour Tour Guides project at the castle last year, and Calum doing it this year, they were both really keen to show us around and tell us what they have learned.

So, on Monday Daddy took the day off and we all went for a day trip to the castle.

The castle is a great place to admire the views over the beautiful city.

The One O'Clock gun is fired every day, except Sundays. Yes, it's fired at one o'clock exactly and despite knowing about it, whenever I find myself walking in the centre of town at one o'clock (which isn't too often these days) it still makes me jump. Originally it was to help the ships down at the docks know the time of day.

James' class studied the Great Hall, built by King James IV, and here is our James telling dad the facts. For instance, the roof was made to look like the hull of a boat as King James loved ships so much. There isn't a single nail holding the roof up. Or, did you know that the spot James is pointing too was used by the King's aides to listen in to guests at a banquet and make sure no-one was plotting against the King?! They would hide in a small room behind that grill and the conversations funneled up to them. A King can never be too careful!

Whenever we go to the castle, we have to get a photo of David at David's tower. See here for the last couple of times.

Calum's class are studying the Royal Appartments, where Mary Queen of Scots gave birth to her son, James VI. Because there was so much turmoil in those days, and Mary was always under threat, her room was the one through the doorway seen below, middle right. It was a small room, but safe as it was built right on the sheerest part of the castle rock. The two windows show the view down, and the builders were paid extra danger money to build the room!

Finally, the top two photos are of the oldest part of the castle, built by King David. The bottom two are from the castle prison, the right hand one I took especially for my American friends!

That completes another Housefulofboys Scottish history lesson :0)

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A Festive-fun-filled weekend

Our festive fun began at lunchtime on Friday when we met up in town with daddy, who had taken the afternoon off. 

First stop was the outdoor ice rink.

The boys were so excited as they had never been ice skating before.

I, on the other hand, had spent nearly every Saturday afternoon between the ages of 11 and 16 ice skating. I never did anything fancy, just went round and round with a few friends, week in week out. I loved it!

16 is a little further back than I would like to think it was though, and when I first stepped onto the ice on Friday I thought, 'Yikes, how come I used to be good at this?!'

Thankfully, after a few tentative circuits hovering safely close to the side, it all came back to me, and I was brave enough to let Calum and David hold onto me, without fearing that they would pull me straight over.

James was determined to do it alone, and look, he isn't clinging to the sides!

This was him zooming, well more like sort of staggering/sliding, across in front of me.

OK, in this photo, I had my purse and phone and a whole host of other things stuffed in my pockets. It's really not very flattering!

My arm was aching after an hour of pulling little boys who were clinging on for dear life around.

We had hired some double bladed skates for Alasdair. I was pretty sure he wouldn't want to go on the ice, but didn't want him to feel left out. When we stepped on he said, 'Too slidy, too slidy!' and dad was only too keen to stay off with him!

Instead, they went on the water dodgem things, which Alasdair absolutely adored.

By the time we were done, it was getting dark and so the temperature was plummeting.

This was a good excuse to head into a coffee shop.

We went into the one in the National Gallery, which is really lovely.

The boys who could had hot chocolate,

 Those who are allergic and so couldn't, had freshly squeezed juices,

And we had tea and cream scones.

Brrr, it was cold when we left.

In this photo, Edinburgh Castle is in the middle on the skyline.

On Saturday morning was the Boys' Brigade Christmas Fayre, which the boys always love. This was followed by a trip to the cinema to see Tintin with daddy, while I was at a Craft Fair.

On Saturday night when we were sitting talking about our weekend, I was thinking that the perfect thing to round it off would be if the snow would come.

Then on Sunday morning................

.....well......

......this was Alasdair this morning on our way home from dropping his brothers at school.

:0)

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A weekend trip

Technically it wasn't really a weekend trip as we were only away for about 30 hours.

My husband had a speaking engagement in Banchory, Aberdeenshire on Sunday morning and so we all went up as a family on Saturday afternoon.

The journey only takes about 2.5 hours but the people we were staying with were not due to be in until about 7pm and so we had a leisurely drive up the East Coast, stopping a few times along the way.

First stop was for tea and scones, just beyond Perth.

Second stop was for...um....well it was another tea room, in Arbroath now, although this time we went for the hot chocolate.

Yes, it was as good as it looks!

After our refreshments, we braved the elements and went to the harbour. There was a strong wind blowing and the waves were crashing over the harbour wall.

The boys started off watching from a safe distance.

Which wasn't really safe enough, as the wind blew the remaining spray pretty far.

So we retreated to the car, and got a bit closer to the waves.

Then we meandered our way up the coast a bit more until we reached Stonehaven, where we stopped for dinner from the fish and chip shop. No-one actually had fish though. We had haggis, steak pie and sausages with chips. Well, not all of them, but different people had different things.

We had our little picnic in the car as it was dark by now and the weather was as above!

We were nice and cosy though.

In Banchory we were staying with a lovely couple who my husband has known since his days studying in Aberdeen.

Sunday was a beautiful day, quite unlike the one before, and Alasdair found this little car in the garden.

Calum and David had a sneaky wee shot on the trampoline before church...

'Let me see mum!'

...and James sat inside, trying out his new sketch pad and pencils.

My husband was speaking at a church about the work the charity he works for does in Aberdeenshire for the homeless. The church had designated yesterday, Compassion Sunday.

They were a really lovely, welcoming congregation.

We spent the afternoon at the house of my husband's best man before heading back down the road again. Of course it would have made a bit more sense for daddy to stay up in Aberdeen as he was heading back up there this morning to work, but he wanted to spend what was left of the weekend with us as he normally does. After dropping the older boys at school this morning, he was on his usual train north again.

On our way home yesterday evening, Calum was very excited when we drove through Dundee and passed the ship that Scott of the Antarctic sailed on.

It's a dreadful photo, as we were only driving past and this was the closest we could get to it. It's on our to-do list for days out to go back and see it properly.

A busy 30 hours, but fun ones.

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TV-stars-to-be

On Saturday our family had the great excitement of filming a short feature to be on Gaelic TV!!

There is a motoring programme on the Gaelic TV channel, BBC Alba, called Air an Rathad (air an ra-had) - On the Road.

Each series they have a family test drive a family car for them and say what they thought of the car.

Through various contrived connections, our family was given the chance to be the one to test drive the car in the coming series.

The car was a Hyundai ix35. 

We were filmed driving around town and doing various 'typical' family weekend things in the car.

I won't say what I thought of the car, I shall save that for when the TV programme comes out :0)

What I will say, though, is that it only had 5 seats and so little Alasdair spent a large part of the day with his Uncle, Auntie and cousins, as there wasn't space for him in the car and he was obviously the one who wouldn't mind not being on TV! He does make it into the publicity shots though.

The other boys really enjoyed the filming. The small crew of director/cameraman, producer and the reasearcher/production girl were really lovely. The cameraman let the boys see how the cameras all worked, and really spurred James on with his excitement of all things film making. James suggested a couple of shots to him and he was willing to try them out. 

It was a long day.

They were probably here for about 6/7 hours and the slot on TV will only be for about 5-10 minutes.

But, it really was fun though.

The programme we are in will probably not be shown until December. I'll be sure to post a link to it when it's on. 

It will be available to view online and there are even subtitles for non-Gaelic speakers!

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A trip to the Transport Museum

Here are a few photos from a trip we took last week.

We headed west, to Glasgow, to visit the Museum of Transport in it's new home by the river.

Trains, trams, buses, motorbikes, boats, more trains, more cars......

It really is a little boy's dream day out.

Alasdair recognised Postman Pat's van, even with the old style livery....

....and the other boys recognised Professor Z, one of the baddies from Cars 2 (which we also saw last week - excellent film, by the way!)

I liked the sense of humour whoever set up this display of a South African steam train had...

But it's not just transport in the new museum. 

There were a few fabulous dresses from the 50s on display.

And to top things off, there was a display of some old toys.

I don't imagine that big Stormtrooper above ever belonged to anyone, but I had the dark haired Sindy doll in the photo below, only my one had a pink tutu.

Back in the days when I loved my Sindys, I loathed all things Star Wars.

I didn't imagine then, that one day my life would be full of all things Star Wars!

Gaelic word of the day:

deideag (jay-jag) - toy

there should be a grave accent on the e, but it's not playing ball tonight, ironically!

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