On our way back down to Edinburgh, we stopped at a few places not too far from the A9/M9. The first was Huntingtower Castle. We actually got their before opening (weren’t paying enough attention to the hours), but we ran into the lone staff member, and she was more than happy to let us in, after she verified the pigeons hadn’t gone too crazy overnight in the upper story.
This was interesting castle, since we’d been at Blair Castle the day before. The first Duke of Atholl lived here, but it’s passed through several other families. Mary Queen of Scots stayed here too. It’s also only a shell of the former building – it would have extended out to the right of what you can see in the first picture.
It has a very cool 16th century painted ceiling in one room, that had managed to be covered up for a while, so it survives today.
After that, we attempted to go see another castle, which turned out to have no parking nearby. And then, there were no laybys or places to turnaround. The first place we could turn around was the Loch Leven Larder, which had a very nice shop and cafe, as well as some trails down to the larger Loch Leven Heritage trail. So we ended up with lunch and my last really good wild flower stop.
Last but not least was Dunfermline Abbey and Palace. The abbey was founded in the 12th century, but was based an earlier priory founded by St. Margaret, an early queen, so it’s got some decent royal history. The palace was built much later (16th century), and was the birthplace of Charles I, who was the last monarch born on Scottish soil. It’s the burial place of Robert the Bruce, and they found his remains during a 19th century renovation, so he has a fancy new tomb in the nave in the still used part of the church. Very interesting place to walk around, and not hard to get to at all.