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  • Thursday, January 19, 2006

    Dalhousie Castle

    I’m backing up a bit, but I want to write down some of the details of our trip to Scotland before I forget. We stayed at a Dalhousie castle just outside of Edinburgh. The castle had been featured on the cover of the book, “Ghost Hunter”, and as soon as we arrived Peter (Pe’er) gave us a private tour of the facilities to point out all the places where ghosts had been spotted. There was a ghost from the queen (duchess?) of the castle who hated weddings and often caused mischief with ceremonies. There was also the recent addition of a ghost dog. In 1994 a dog had gone to the top of the highest tower and then thrown itself off. Late on moonless nights the dog could still be heard to bark. Apparently the moon was always out while I was there because I never heard any mysterious howling.

    Peter also showed us additional idiosyncrasies of the castle. There was a special room for the Duke of the Castle. It was designed with a floor that was tilted so that one side of the room was about 6 inches higher than the other. The tilt was to help the Duke appear taller to impress his lady friends (when just owning the castle isn’t enough). This might also help to explain why the Duchess wasn’t so keen on weddings.

    Dinners in the castle were held in the “dungeon”. The area seemed more like an armory, with a liberal assortment of weapons and armor decorating most of the stone walls. The food was great, with the meal finishing with the pre-desert, followed by the desert, and then the all important post desert. I also enjoyed Scottish Oatmeal, the local brew.

    One oddity of the castle was that it was the location of non-stop weddings. We were there on a Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday in the middle of the winter and every day had a full day wedding ceremony. I was amazed that people could get so many guests in the middle of the week, but Scottish bagpipe players in traditional kilts are a powerful draw for getting out the crowds. Another option for the wedding couple was to have the ring delivered to the best man by a falcon, which swoops out of the sky with the ring attached to one of its feet. The falconer (?) told us that they had only had one problem. A bride had insisted on having cute little bunnies up at the altar to add to the ambience. When the falcon found the cute little bunnies more interesting than the best man, a certain ambience was created, but not the one that the bride had hoped for.



    The birds were actually amazing. There were eagles, hawks, and owls as well as the falcons and we were able to spend a morning with them. You would wear a special glove and hold up a little piece of chicken. A bird would then swoop out of tree, land on your hand, and get its reward. Just seeing a bird swooping down with a 3 or 4 foot wingspan and land on your hand is a sight not to miss.

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