Ye’ll tak’ the high road and I’ll tak’ the low road...

And I'll be in Scotland before ye!

Well, it looks like I got that part right, although I certainly didn't take the low road to get here. The song "Loch Lomond" is supposedly about a Jacobite Highlander who was captured and sentenced to be executed, while a younger soldier who had fought alongside him was to be released back to Scotland as a messenger. Therefore, the younger soldier was going to take the "high road", the physical road to Scotland while the older soldier was to take the "low road", the spirit path through the underworld, back to his homeland.

If there's one thing Scots are proud of, it's how long they were able to keep the English out of their country despite the massive inequality in their sizes and populations. Our first stop on our trip to Loch Lomond highlighted this very well, when we went to Stirling to see the Wallace Monument. The tribute to William Wallace, who fought against Edward I of England and was played by Mel Gibson in the movie Braveheart, is a massive building on top of the hill Abbey Craig, near the site of Wallace's defeat of an English army at the Battle of Stirling Bridge. Tony did a dramatic retelling of the battle, complete with a fake English accent for the English soldiers, as we were on top of the Craig, where he could indicate the site of the battle. It was pretty amusing, especially since he referred to any generic English soldier as Nigel. It also really highlighted the difference between Scottish and English accents when he was imitating the other.

After the Wallace Monument, we drove through Stirling and passed Stirling Castle and a statue of Robert the Bruce, the original Braveheart. Robert became King Robert I of Scotland following the Wars of Independence against Edward I of England. According to legend, the Bruce always wanted to go on the Crusades, but was unable to. At the end of his life as he lay dying, his closest friend and advisor, Sir James Douglas or "The Black Douglas", came to him to tell the King that he was going on the Crusades and the Bruce begged him to take him along. Since he was dying, this was impossible, but Douglas agreed to take his heart along, and used it and the legend of the King as a way to rally his troops against a Moorish army in Granada. Tony told us that the Scottish Crusaders were highly outnumbered by the Moors, so Douglas rode back and forth in front of his troops, inspiring them to fight before leading the charge. He had the Bruce's heart in an iron box on a chain, and as he charged the enemy, he whirled it over his head before loosing it at the Moors and shouting, "Lead on, Brave heart, lead on!" I have heard different versions of this story, and am not sure what is true, but at the very least, the Bruce's heart did travel to Moorish Granada with the Crusaders, and is to this day buried in a separate place than the rest of his body.

From the Wallace Monument and Stirling, we moved on to Doune Castle, famous for being one of the two castles where filming took place for Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Doune Castle was the location for numerous scenes, such as the taunting scene with the French, the "Camelot" song and dance routine, parts of the Castle Anthrax segment and the wedding disrupted by Sir Lancelot. We were only there for ten minutes or so, because Loch Lomond is quite a distance from St. Andrews and we had to keep going.

We made one more stop before reaching Loch Lomond, stopping at Loch Katrine. The steamship Sir Walter Scott makes trips around the loch on a regular basis, making it the only steamer still in regular use. It wasn't out on the loch when we were there, since it's being refurbished to use biofuels rather than a wood furnace. Scotland is really far ahead in this whole "green sustainability" movement.

Finally, we drove the rest of the way straight to Loch Lomond, listening to the song on repeat until we sang along sufficiently well for Tony to turn it off. I never realized how large it actually is. We were at one of its narrow points and it was still almost a mile wide. It gets up to five miles across! The day had started off as sunny, but when we got to Loch Lomond it turned into what I like to think of as "Scotland weather". The sun disappeared behind the clouds and it turned windy. Mist started creeping down the mountains across the loch, shielding their tops from view. It was beautiful, in a kind of wild and gray way.

I walked by myself along the edge of the loch for awhile and I have one thing to say about the landscape. After seeing it myself, it comes as no surprise to me that there are so many stories of fairies and giants and things of that nature that come from Scotland. There's no bare dirt anywhere, and there are random patches of moss all over the place. If one of those patches had lifted up and a fairy or leprechaun came climbing out, I'm not even sure I would have been surprised. It just feels like that kind of place. But perhaps that's just me. Even without that feeling though, it's a beautiful place to visit. I'm glad we made it to Loch Lomond-- we almost stopped at Loch Katrine to take a boat ride on The Lady of the Lake rather than continuing onwards, but since it was the Loch Lomond day tour, we eventually decided that we had to make it to the loch.

It was a fun but very tiring weekend, as both trips got back almost two hours later than they were supposed to. But it was very much worth it. Seeing some of the rest of Scotland was great. I might make a few more weekend trips with friends, because I'd still like to see more (like Loch Ness!), but if I don't get around to it, at least I've seen quite a bit more than just St. Andrews!