Wandering Around Talking To Rainbows

What I’ve Just Finished Reading
I finished The Play of Gilgamesh by Edwin Morgan which took me a ridiculous amount of time given how short it was, but was nonetheless an enjoyable retelling of the story. Points for the Glaswegian jester too...

What I’m Reading
I collected Face Like Glass from the library on Tuesday and then tripped and fell into reading it. I opened it to read the prologue to see what it was like and put it down again several hours and 100 pages later. It's not a book that I can just read a chapter of and put down, and is also rather a substantial paperback so it's not going to be lunchtime reading - which is a shame because it feels exactly the kind of book that you take everywhere and read every moment you get. (It couldn't have come in the week I only had one shift rather than the week when I have six?!) If it lives up to its current promise I'm going to want to read everything Francis Hardinge has ever written....oh and usuallyhats? I see what you meant about the cheese...

What I’m Reading Next
Need to finish the library books then get back into reading stuff from my shelf, I was doing well and then I got distracted, so I need to get back on track.

I was looking at my photo backlog and thinking I ought to make another photo post, I discovered two things. One, I've got loads of photos from my trip up the Far North Line still to post, and two for some reason I uploaded my photos of Dunrobin Castle to flickr twice...so its probably high time I sorted that out and made a photo post about my visit there.





One of the things I love best about the railway lines in the Highlands are the tiny little request stop stations, sometimes in the middle of nowhere (Rannoch Moor anyone?), others in tiny little places that clearly can't justify having a station but having one by virtue of being on the route provides a vital service or just odd little quirks of railway funding. Dunrobin Castle station is about a mile outside Golspie (which has its own station) a quirk of the money and enthusiasm that the then Duke of Sutherland poured into the railway. (He was a massive railway geek, when he had royal visitors he would drive the train from Golspie to Dunrobin himself.) Anyway, I love the little request stops, but I never have an excuse to get off at them (they're generally served by one train every 3 hours so its not practical to get off wander about and then get back on the next train). However, Dunrobin Castle has, as the name implies, a castle, along with a gardens and a museum so I was able to get off the train be a tourist at the castle, then flag down the next train and go on my way!

The station sits just outside of the estate's gates and clearly had its own set of gates at some point.

Walking down the drive towards the castle you get tantalising glimpses of the place through the trees.

Scottish baronial style - ie modern castle built post the times when they actually had a martial purpose - which always reminds me of those fairytale castles you find scattered through Bavaria.

I suspect its the clocktowers. There's something central European about them.

Impressive doors, though clearly not expecting to have to withstand an actual battering ram. (Though given what the Dukes and Duchesses of Sutherland did to their tennants I'm amazed they never got the pitchforks and flaming torches treatment...)



Pretty light fittings and stone masonry.

Up the turrets.



The gardens behind the castle are quite something.

The falconry show was excellent. This Eagle Owl in particular was a right character.

The castle from the gardens, looking like it escaped from a Fairytale.

It's perched rather precariously above them...

I forgot to take a picture of the museum itself, but here's a picture of the lovely little wrought iron gate the divides the gardens from the museum.

Both the inside of the castle and the inside of the museum are off limits to cameras but are nonetheless worth the visit. It's a bit of an expensive detour but an enjoyable one, even if it does skate carefully past all the bloody and problematic parts of the history of the estate and its owners. (Kind of a shame that its a private castle rather than in the hands of Historic Scotland or the National Trust, as it could really benefit for some proper historical context to its beautiful period reconstructions..)