after a peaceful and quiet night we enjoy a leisurely breakfast at no 10 b&b and then start on our rotary walk around stirling.

it takes us down gladstone place to the king’s park which was confiscated by the crown back in the 10th century to serve as a royal hunting ground for the next centuries — today it’s a golf course and a playing field. from king’s park it’s past victoria place and then into the royal gardens to a well (which from afar looks much better than close up), take only “14 of the 22 steps down” and follow a “rough path” (rough turns out to be a rather relative word, probably rough in rotary terms) around the castle with nice views of the landscape surrounding stirling.

unfortunately, the weather turns from providing the occassional light drizzle to a more constant, dense drizzle — rather funny but still of the thoroughly wetting kind and we decide that instead of becoming famous and be caught on TV — a TV producer, camera man, and sound man just turn around the corner when we approach the path to stirling visitor centre — that now is a good time to visit the castle.

we are a bit early for the guided tour at 12:00 at, after paying for tickets (”no, we won’t be visiting edinburgh castle; no, we don’t need the historic scotland explorer pass; and, no, we don’t need the audio guide nor the booklet; thank you”), we retreat to the unicorn cafe for a cuppa…

…and almost miss the 12:00 deadline, which would have been a shame: our guide is a very lively, energetic scot who obviously had some theatrical training. it’s one of the best guided tours we’ve ever had the pleasure of taking part in! no audio guide nor booklet could have told the story of stirling castle in such an animated and spirited way! excellent stuff!

after the tour (which for my taste is over just too soon) we visit the weavers at the tapestry studio (who are recreating the tapestries that were sold to the metropolitan museum new york in the last century): very fascinating project, very long time frame (longitudinal), reminding me of the clock of the long now (which has a slightly longer time frame) and john cage’s as slow as possible. quite an impressive counter point to our short term world!

we finish our sightseeing by visiting the exhibition about the argyll and sutherland highlanders regiments and argyll’s lodging — a 17th century townhouse, really well restored and worth a visit.

at [peckam's] in port street we buy whisky (10yr old talisker, 1992 talisker), some cakes for the train ride tomorrow, & some brown sauce…

dinner is again at the [no 2 pub] — unfortunately we are bit late: around 20:00 they dim down the lights and switch from acceptable music to hard rock…

very entertaining guided tour through stirling castle, nice delicatessen shop