Day 17 Stirling Castle to the Denver Broncos........??

Our foggy, rainy day started at Stirling Castle.  High on a promontory, the Scots have been building and rebuilding at this location since the 15th century.  It is quite a hodge podge of of buildings upon buildings.  Many Scottish kings and queens were crowned here, and it has survived eight sieges over the centuries.

Many carved "plates" in the ceilings.  Beautiful

For years now, they have been reproducing the original tapestries that hung in the
royal apartments.  The originals were all destroyed, but the plans were discovered
and copied meticulously

Down the street is the Church of the Holy Rude.  A brief history lesson.....King James V, (the King James Bible guy) had just one surviving legitimate heir when he died in 1542, Mary.  Unfortunately, Mary was only 6 days old when she became Mary, Queen of Scots.  BTW, she cried during the whole coronation while someone held the crown above her head,  Fast forward to 1567; she was forced to abdicate for political and religious reasons, to her one year old son James VI.

Here is the irony.  Mary was a Catholic and at her son's coronation in the Church of the Holy Rude, which she missed since she was languishing in prison, John Knox preached the sermon.  You remember that John Knox was the Martin Luther of Scotland during the beginning of the Reformation.  The postscript to this crazy story is that Mary, eventually fled to London under the protection of her second cousin Queen Elizabeth I, (staunch Protestant), but after 18 more years in exile and confinement, Elizabeth felt a bit intimidated and had Mary beheaded.  Whoa.

The original oak rafters.  Beautiful.

But, the best part of the Church for me was that the chief organist was practicing for a concert tomorrow, and we could sit and listen to a several hundred year old pipe organ being played in 600 year old church.  Stunning.

Next, the Flakirk Wheel.  Scotland is known for its locks between all of its lochs.  But that takes time to move a boat through the locks to get to the different levels of the different lochs.  So what makes sense?  A Jetson's inspired Wheel.  It rotates and lifts a boat 79 feet, but it still takes two locks to finish the job at another 36 feet.  It is used primarily to give paying customers a one hour ride up and down and a bit a a cruise in between.  I think a technological challenge beat out a practical solution.  It is huge, look at the people on the lower left.

Finally, the Kelpies in the Helix.  The Kelpies are 100 foot tall, 300 ton steel......horse.....heads.  Years to fabricate, months to assemble.  Really impressive, but I couldn't help think that it is a copy of the Denver Broncos mascot, Thunder.  You decide.