Fight for your right...

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 And so to Culloden...

This has been on my bucket list since 1992, and you know what it's like when you have wanted something for so long, that when it finally arrives you are disappointed? Well, this was definitely not the case with Culloden.

It was quiet, respectful and informative, with an absolutely brilliant museum/visitor centre.  The husband very kindly walked the dogs around the battlefield for an hour of so while I indulged my love of history.  You felt like this had happened a couple of years ago, rather than just over 250 years and the sad, sad story of the Jacobites unfolded in front of my eyes.  

Battles are a funny old thing.  Most of them are played out by powerful men looking for more power, land, wealth, and I suppose that this one was no different.  You got the feeling that every one of the Scottish men on that field were there for love of their country, and not for the more worldly rewards. And while those men died almost where they stood (700 in the first six minutes) the man they fought for fled for the hills, and then the continent where he lived a relatively long life in comfort. 

I found the whole experience quite emotional, and never more so that watching one of the guides talking about the total numbers of lives lost on that day.  There is a wall outside the visitor centre with bricks sticking out of it to represent every life lost.  Fifty bricks (the Government forces), then a smooth section, and then another stretch of fifteen hundred for the fallen Jacobites.  You could hear the sadness in the guide's voice; usually they are quite happy to sit on the fence of history, but in Scotland it seems very different.

We walked the Memorial Walk across the field (red and blue flags marked where the armies lined up) and stopped at various stones where the different clans fell.  Fraser, Ogilvy, Macdonald, Robertson, Drummond...the list just went on and on.

We left Culloden filled with respect for those men who fought for what they believed in, and headed to the Clava Cairns just down the road.  These are three large stone structures, used for ceremony and burial four thousand years ago.  We could walk into them, and see the carvings made by people like you and me.  There were also standing stones there, which gave us the opportunity to take a photo of us pressed up against one just as the heroine in Outlander did.  This was to send to Mrs S as she is also a huge fan.

'Did you get through?' she asked.

I wish...



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