{"id":160,"date":"2007-08-26T12:07:48","date_gmt":"2007-08-26T00:07:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/craig.dubculture.co.nz\/blog\/2007\/08\/26\/scottish-border-abbeys-and-castles\/"},"modified":"2007-08-26T12:09:28","modified_gmt":"2007-08-26T00:09:28","slug":"scottish-border-abbeys-and-castles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/craig.dubculture.co.nz\/blog\/2007\/08\/26\/scottish-border-abbeys-and-castles\/","title":{"rendered":"Scottish Border Abbeys and Castles"},"content":{"rendered":"

We could see a nice old building out our hostel window, so we wandered down to have a look. The building turned out to be the old Melrose Abbey, and the gentlemen at the shop convinced us we wanted to buy a Historic Scotland explorer pass<\/a>. With this, you can visit all the attractions you like in a (3\/5\/7) day period. We bought a 3 day pass and decided we'd stop at everything we could.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Melrose Abbey<\/a> was originally founded by the Cistercian monks in 1136. Richard II burnt the crap out of it, and then felt so bad about doing so he paid to rebuild it.<\/p>\n

Just down the road was the Dryburgh Abbey<\/a>, another Cistercian site - this one with less of the original ruins, but more of the rebuilt architecture intact. On the way to Dryburgh is the famous statue of William Wallace<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Crichton Castle<\/a> was a wee way off the road, and a wee climb up a hill to get to. This was, in a wee way, reflected in the gentleman working there: a very friendly and unfailingly polite gent named Robin who seemed like he didn't have company all that often. It's unfortunate, because there's a lot of history in Crichton - Mary, Queen of Scots visited there, you know? (Don't worry, every castle can claim that.)<\/p>\n

<\/a>Robin very kindly gave us extensive hand-written directions to Craigmillar Castle<\/a> (which Tom has kept as a souvenir). Craigmillar is in very good condition, but not all that old, and more of a stately home than an actual military castle. More well preserved latrines<\/a>, also. It also has a prison just for midgets<\/a>, and a pizza oven for their use<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The point of going to Edinburgh on that particular night was to see James<\/a> play at the Edinburgh Corn Exchange. A very friendly bus driver was prepared to wait for me to go buy a 40p chocolate bar so I had exact change, the pick-up of the tickets went without hassle, and Tom and I settled in with some drinks.<\/p>\n

Didn't take the camera (no \"pics or it didn't happen\" call from Drew, please), but I can report that the band was in fine fettle (as they say in Scotland). About two songs in they played \"Sit Down\", which inspired me to begin in a reasonably trouble-free run to the front, where I stayed on the railing for the rest of the show. A number of new songs were played, and some older ones I didn't know so well, but a good mix, great times, lots of cups of water from security. Dancers picked to go up on stage during Gold Mother - I wasn't interesting enough, it seems, but I did get to rub Tim's head after he sang She's A Star from the front railing, held up by security.<\/p>\n

Our bus broke on the way home (what was it with us and public transport breaking?) but a friendly couple who'd been to the gig kindly allowed us to share their taxi.<\/p>\n

We went out seeking free Fringe festival jazz, but some weird-ass experimental theatre group ran for longer than they should have. A friend of the group members came out of the performance early saying \"I'm embarassed to know them, it's painful\".<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We could see a nice old building out our hostel window, so we wandered down to have a look. The building turned out to be the old Melrose Abbey, and the gentlemen at the shop convinced us we wanted to buy a Historic Scotland explorer pass. With this, you can visit all the attractions you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[67],"tags":[58],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/craig.dubculture.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/craig.dubculture.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/craig.dubculture.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/craig.dubculture.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/craig.dubculture.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/craig.dubculture.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/craig.dubculture.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/craig.dubculture.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/craig.dubculture.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}