We rather liked the Palace Hotel even though it clearly needed a lot of work. But I have to say that it has won the award for the absolutely the worst breakfast I have ever had in the United Kingdom ... ever. And that includes many visits to these islands over the past forty years. Before we drove away, we had one sight which had been closed the day before, Inverness Cathedral. This was the first cathedral built in Great Britain since the Reformation. It belongs to the Scottish Episcopal Church.
The interior is not really all the grand. There are dozens of larger and more impressive churches in New York or Chicago.
Really, the only interesting thing in there were these little knit mouse dolls scattered in points around the cathedral designed, I guess, to make the building more interesting and accessible to children. And they were a fun touch. Here was the mouse bishop on the bishop's chair.
And here were the mice presenting little mice for baptism. John wondered if Mr. Mouse wondered why one of his kids looked a little different. But no, these are Scottish Episcopalians and I am sure Mrs. Mouse did nothing unrespectable with the plumber.
After we left town, we stopped for a bit in a shopping center where John picked up some socks and stuff like that. Then we went off towards Culloden Moor, the site of the brutal defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Highland clans who supported him.
I have been interested in the Battle of Culloden ever since I was a kid. I was in seventh or eighth grade in Ohio and our local library showed films on Friday afternoons. My friends and I usually stopped by on our way home. One of the few I remember was Peter Watkin's 1964 documentary recreation of the battle. So when I figured out that our Highland Drive was going to take us by the battlefield, I knew we had to stop there.
It was a gray cold day and that made the battlefield even more melancholy.
We had a great guide who walked us around the field explaining the background of the conflict, the movement of the troops, and the course of the fighting. The actual fighting began when the Jacobites, that is the supporters of Charlie, fired a canon shot that landed on the roof of this cottage.
The highlanders were no match for the better trained and armed government troops. Notice I wrote "government troops" here and not "English." In fact, Scottish loyalties were badly divided and many of the soldiers who fought against the Jacobite and in support of King George II were also Scots. In less than an hour, the royal forces had decisively won. Hundreds of the highlanders died on the field, and there was absolutely no mercy shown to any of the survivors or their supporters.
A century later, a Scot placed these grave markers on the field. But, as our guide pointed out, these in no sense actually mark real mass graves. But they do commemorate the clans who actually participated and died.
Just as we were leaving the battle site, my eye caught sight of this one. I almost stopped breathing when I saw it.
This man was one of my ancestors and he died here at Culloden. And perhaps that set in motion events that would later lead to my great grandfather emigrating to Canada.
It was a long drive from Culloden to St. Andrews. We are staying at a really fabulous hotel here, one of my big splurges of the trip. I will show some pictures in tomorrow's post. For today, I am content to leave it on the more somber note.
