Day 252: “Tis but a scratch”

03/04/2022

This morning started with an early, well, it was not that early, 09:30ish video call to Curious George, Eloise wanted to see what he was up to today. Turns out, party animal Curious Geroge was feeling worse for wear. We were not going to be seeing Georgey today. It was a Google ‘castle’ sort of morning to see where the day took us. A castle we have been excited to see was Doune Castle which featured in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The castle has been closed for site inspections since we have been here at least. There are some lovely walking trails around it, so we figured we would go see how close we could get. After finishing her toddlerccino, it was into the car.

As we pulled up we were glad that we could see the castle and walk up to it. We deployed Darryl for a sneaky peek to see if those castle inspectors were working hard or hardly working.

Doune Castle is a medieval stronghold near the village of Doune, in the Stirling district of central Scotland. Recent research has shown that Doune Castle was originally built in the thirteenth century, then probably damaged in the Scottish Wars of Independence, before being rebuilt in its present form in the late 14th century by Robert Stewart, Duke of Albany (c. 1340–1420), the son of King Robert II of Scots, and Regent of Scotland from 1388 until his death.

Eloise took some extra shots for her new blog Foxieinkilts.com, worth a look!

We were silly and forgot our Trojan Rabbit so we could not sneak in. After dodging the flying cows launched at us by the Frenchman we made our way down the path along the River Teith.

We found the perfect spot for Eloise to practice her unorthodox dual-wielding rock skipping technique.

We had to keep Lachnado loaded up with veggie fries, otherwise, he would start Hungry Hungry Hippoing the rocks, he thought he was sitting on a smorgasbord.

By this stage, we were all getting peckish. We made our way into the town centre. Google suggested it would be a short stroll but we forgot to add on the Eloise factor. There was also tricky terrain for Lachnado to navigate.

After a slow dawdle and crawl into the wee town of Doune there were not many options, the only cafe was fully booked. We pushed on to Stirling to see what we could find.

We pulled into the River House, a sister restaurant to our favourite at Duck Bay. Sophie ordered an awesome burger while Liam got the world’s smallest pork schnitzel. Overall we prefer Duck Bay.

Some of you will be glad to see Eloise was dressed the part to celebrate Friday’s win “Adelaide steals epic Showdown against Port Adelaide with Jordan Dawson goal after the siren”. What better way to celebrate than going full Steve Irwin.

The kids were buzzing, so we thought we would see what Stirling’s town centre had to offer.

On the dawdle in we checked out Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum,

The Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum – formerly The Smith Institute – has played a very special part in the history of Stirling since its foundation in 1874. Established by the bequest of artist Thomas Stuart Smith (1815–1869) on land supplied by the Burgh of Stirling, it is an historic public-private partnership which has continued to the present day. It was founded as a gallery of mainly contemporary art, with museum and library reading room ‘for the benefit of the inhabitants of Stirling, Dunblane and Kinbuck’.

In the centre of the art gallery, there was a striking tiger. The tiger was wrapped in Tunnock’s Tea Cakes. To be fair, the amount of Tunnock’s Tea Cakes this house has consumed made the art piece slightly less impressive.

There was a lot of old stuff: Including Sophie The world’s oldest football and The world’s oldest curling stone.

The World’s Oldest Football was made in Stirling and discovered behind the paneling of the Queen’s Chamber in Stirling Castle, which was decorated in the 1540’s. Mary Queen of Scots was there at this time and later in life was known to have an interest in all sports but especially golf and football

Curling, like shinty, is a native sport to Scotland and can be traced back to medieval times, with the world’s oldest curling stone (in the collection of the Stirling Smith Museum) dating from 1511. The earliest surviving reference to curling dates from 1541 when a challenge match which involved the throwing of stones across ice was recorded. The participants in this contest were a monk from Paisley Abbey and a relative of the abbot.

This morning we found ourselves at Mugdock Country Park as Eloise had a playdate with Emma. She had been saving her smarties all week to give some to Emma.

For lunch, we headed up to Loch Lomond Shores for Springfest to meet up with Kirrie and Max. We were discussing on the drive up if we would see Curious George. Eloise was not getting her hopes up, “no, George is sleeping”.

It was a proper Scottish spring’s day with some sweet sweet sun followed by sideways rain.

After watching some highland dancing we had a four-course lunch. Partly because Liam misunderstood the lady serving at the food stall. The food was delicious, although there was not even a pizza crunch in sight. As the rain started coming in we grabbed more homemade fudge than we needed and dashed. Eloise was extremely chirpy on the way home as the fudge lady gave her more than her fair share of tasters.

Today “Celtic took a giant stride towards reclaiming the Scottish Premiership title after battling back to beat Rangers at Ibrox and move six points clear of their rivals”. It was the usual fiery affair with a “Celtic staff member [needing] stitches after being hit by glass bottle at Rangers game”.

Liam was glad that the majority of Australia ended daylight savings today. With Australia and the UK becoming two hours closer over the past two weeks. It will be a big help through till October.