Anne and Wilf decided to take me around on a tour of the surrounding area. We started off checking out the William Wallace memorial. I met one of Anne and Wilf's daughters and her youngest kid, baby Sarah. We walked up from the base all the way up to the base of the memorial and then up the spiral staircase. You can actually see what is reputed to be Willie Wallace's sword as well! Apparently, based on the size of the sword he would have been over 6'6"! That's a big guy! There are several rooms as you go up the staircase, one with a super cheesy movie about William Wallace and Robert the Bruce. I tried really hard to not to laugh! When we got to the top there's this beautiful view of Stirlingshire. Too bad it was raining. And never stopped the entire day.
After the memorial, we went to Castle Campbell, which was great because you actually can walk around in all these different rooms in the castle's tower. It was the first castle that I could actually imagine people living in. We ate a sandwich and soup in the basement of the castle and it was kind of cool to eat in an arched stone building. Then cook told us that the fog was coming in, so I ran up to the top to see the view before we got totally socked in by the fog. Sadly, I was too late. It was still so cool because I've never really experienced such thick fog. It is really quiet. I don't know if that really makes sense, but that is the best way to describe it.
That evening we headed to Dunkeld, Perthshire. The neat thing about Dunkeld is that it is right beside Birnam! As in Shakespeare's Birnam woods! We went and checked out the only tree left from Birnam wood (Although I have no idea how they can tell). It was an impressively huge tree though! After, we looked at Beatrix Potter's Gardens. It's this really cute park in the middle of Dunkeld. Beatrix spent all her childhood summers there. So the garden has all of her characters in little bronze statues all over the garden! Interesting fact: Beatrix Potter was actually an expert in fungi and presented a paper on spores that was dismissed by the academy because she was a woman. Her ideas proved later on to be correct, but it was too late and she went on to other things. Namely writing and drawing her awesome books! After we went to an exhibit about her, and it was honestly one of the best exhibits I'd ever seen. It focused on her development as a scientist, early interest in water colours and drawing minutely detailed animal life. The child's side of it involved little costumes that kids could wear of her characters and puzzles, and play areas all aesthetically tied to Beatrix Potter!
Then I met Morvan's family and had "tea" (that's supper here). We stayed after supper for a while talking. It was really fun!
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