Crosses, Castles and Sweethearts

The morning brings another unusually beautiful sunny Scottish day. When I left Austin, I was planning for rain everyday. I suppose since I planned for it and packed a bunch of wet weather gear, Murphy had to prove me wrong. In this case it worked in my favor. I don’t mind lugging a few extra coats if it means that the weather will be nice.

A mandatory Scottish history class destination is the Ruthwell Cross. The cross is an 8^th century early Christian monument which is now housed with in a quaint little country church.

It has been put back together after a rough time during the period of the Reformation when it was deemed to be idolatrous and busted into pieces and buried. The cross is carved on all sides with early Christian iconography with some slightly-pagan mixed in. Apparently, when they pieced it back together they made sure all the more Christian bits faced out to the congregation and the more pagan bits to the reverse.

The church had these incredible little architectural drawings and age old seemingly original documents about the church hanging on the walls. Too bad that they are not being preserved in some better way.

From the Ruthwell Cross, we headed to Castle Caerlaverock which is a spectacular moated castle.

It’s in ruins but it is still in pretty good shape as far as ruins go with many of the walls still standing. You can walk about some of the rooms and dream of how it would have been for the people who had lived here. The castle is unique in Scotland as it is a three sided castle, with the entrance and drawbridge at the apex of the triangle the strongest part. Over the years the castle changed hands and was sacked by the English and then the Scottish and then the English again who decided they’d had enough and knocked the back wall out and ruined all the fun.

A quick drive from the castle in the town of New Abbey is the ruins of Sweetheart Abbey. Some groovy chick named Devorgilla de Balliol, Lady of Galloway, founded the place. She carried the embalmed heart of her dearly departed husband for 22 years before she was buried with it in the abbey. How romantic. The abbey is in pretty good shape after nearly 800 years. It’s a little drafty but has a nice green carpet.

Also in the town is an age old water powered corn mill. Contrary to its name it doesn’t mill any corn. Corn in the Scottish and English sense being a generic term for grain. The New Abbey Corn Mill was operational for a few hundred years milling oats for cooking and animal feed. George, the lonely tour guide, was a real cut up keeping us laughing with “corny” jokes well past closing time.

We had a nice dinner at a pub called “Robert the Bruce” and drove back to the B&B.

Tomorrow we’ll catch the train to Edinburgh to tour the gift shops.