Today we left Edinburgh and headed further north towards the Scottish Highlands. We crossed a bridge and entered a county called the Kingdom of Fife. Andrew Carnegie was born here, grew up very poor, and managed to become one of the richest people in the world of his time.
We passed a Scotch pine Christmas tree farm.
We passed through the town of Auchtermuchty where the band The Proclaimers are from. Their top song is I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles) released in 1988.
St. Andrews is famous as the home of golf because the sport has been played there since the early 1400s, making it the birthplace of the game.
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| Our first picture together on this trip |
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| St. Andrews hotel overlooking the course and sea |
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| First hole tee box |
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| Eighteenth green |
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| Bridge where winners have their picture taken |
St. Andrews is the name of the town, as well as the golf course. The oldest, very prestigious, university in Scotland, also called St. Andrews is here. Prince William and Kate Middleton met there as students.
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| University quad |
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University bell tower
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St. Andrews golf course and city are located overlooking the North Sea. The beach in the second picture below was where the opening scene of the movie Chariots of Fire was filmed.
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| View of the North Sea from St. Andrews |
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Beach where movie was filmed
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We drove through the city of Dundee where the ship The Discovery was built. This was the ship that Ernest Shackelton sailed to Antarctica in 1902. The original ship is now moored back in Dundee having been returned and restored as a visitor attraction. She is only one of two surviving ships from the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration to survive. The other is in Norway.
We kept heading north and finally reached the Highlands. Up to this point, the England and Scotland countryside has been farmland and rolling hills. The Highlands has some mountains. The tallest is 1,350 feet, so not very tall mountains.
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| All signs in the Highlands are in Gaelic and English |
Our last stop of the day was the Culloden battlefield where the Jacobites fought the British in 1745. It was the last battle fought on British soil. Around 1,500 Scottish clan members died at this site. Many of them are buried in this field. There is a visitor center and museum.
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| Culloden battlefield |
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| Culloden visitor center |
As a result of this battle, the Scottish clans were forced to give up their culture, including not wearing kilts and not speaking Gaelic. Those laws were repealed over a hundred years later in 1871.
We crossed over a bridge of the river that flows into Loch Ness. Guess where we're going tomorrow!
Our trip today was a little longer, 221 miles, but we had a few interesting stops along the way to break it up.
