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Craigmillar Castle, 15th century home of the Preston family. Rainy Sunday afternoon with dark cloud looming over the castle.

Craigmillar Castle, about a mile and a half walk from our house. Mary Queen of Scots was a vistor at times; she would ride here from her home at Holyrood Palace on horseback.

We had an excursion today in less than perfect weather, though it wasn't uncomfortable to any great extent. We've been pretty tired out since our week's worth of traveling west, but it's hard to just sit inside all day thinking about all the things we're near now, and will soon be across the pond from. So we had us some dandy sandwiches for lunch and then packed up for a walk in the gray, soon to be rainy, day to visit Craigmiller Castle which we figure is about 1 to 1.5 miles from our house(what a day to forget the pedomenter). We can actually see it when we cross the soccer field near here when going to the Kings Buildings where Jim works, or to the Shell station's "Select Shop."...a convenience store/gas station...or garage, as they'd say here.

Moggie in the main entry court.

Moggie on one of the many circular stairways. Straight staircases are a more recent development in architecture.

The great hall. A venue for a wedding last weekend, thus the chairs. Ordinarily, the chairs are not in the castle.

The wall brackets (stone corbels) in the great hall that used to support the decorated ceiling.

The castle is maintained by Historic Scotland, in which we have memberships. So we can visit all the Historic Scotland sights for no extra charge and get to have a 20% discount off all shopping done in their shops. We toured the castle, often in the rain and pretty gusty winds...several times our brollies turned inside out. The castle was marvelous. Lots of levels and rooms and nooks and crannies...latrines, no less!...neat fireplaces, ovens, pantries, gun loops (like arrow slits, but with a circular shape at the bottom to hold the muzzles of the gun, I think), prison, bedchambers, great hall which still had chairs in it from a wedding held there yesterday...all this is in ruins, but the great hall would indeed make an interesting wedding setting in front of a massive stone fireplace. We bought a book about the castle and it said it was at Craigmiller that they took a brother of James III (I think) to hold him prisoner until it was time to take him into town to a house on Canongate where he was summarily bled to death. Also at Craigmiller, the plot to kill Lord Darnley, Mary Q of Scots loathed husband, was hatched. Mary visted there several times during her reign...rein...rain. The lady in the shop told us that people in those days didn't bath...actually Mary was cleaner than others because she was raised in the more sophistocated courts of France. But the shop lady said there is a Scottish word "mingon," which means filthy-dirty, which she said people were in those days (l5 c. was the date the castle was begun)...even the top drawer people in the castle were smelly. Thought you needed to know that. It was too difficult to bathe...I guess they just sponged off here and there, when they thought of it. Groan.

Moggie, another spiral staircase.

Three children playing on a swing in the Craigmillar Mains, just adjacent to the castle. "Mains" means "central," such as "Central Craigmillar." These children may be re-enacting a game with the swing that the children played in the 16th century.

View to the south-west. Those are the Pentland Hills in the distance. Do you see the white lines in the middle of the picture? Those are artifical snow ski slopes.

View to the north-west. There're the King's Buildings of the University of Edinburgh on the right-middle. The green strip on the middle left is the playground adjacent to Double Hedges Park, where we live.

View to the north-east. Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Crags are visible in the distance. At the base of these is near where Holyrood Palace is.

Moggie, standing on a parapet in the rain.

Moggie, standing on a parapet in the rain.

Moggie in the outer court.

Another look at the outer court

A view of the castle.

We walked back home on a footpath through a pasture next to the castle. The shop lady told us just to follow the path, climb over the fence, and it'd be no problem. Well, there was a problem in that the path sorta disappeared. We could see hints of its going in two directions. We took the downhill direction because the other looked like it headed into thick woods, no place to climb over. I think we chose the wrong way, because it didn't save us any time, or distance like we think it should have. I guess we'll try the other way next time, or we'll never know. I think we'll definitely try to take Virginia and crew there...it was as impressive as other castles we've seen farther away.

Moggie, standing with the bag of goodies that we bought at the castle shop.

Jim near castle.