Friday, September 11th, 2009: Caerlaverock Castle and Drive to Shrewsbury

After another good breakfast, we reluctantly took our leave of the friendly proprietor and her family at the Bobbin B&B. Packing the car, we headed eastward to Caerlaverock Castle. Caerlaverock Castle was a beautifully shaped triangle of a castle with two huge towers guarding the bridge that was the only opening across the moat. Unfortunately, the sun was smack dab behind the castle and that made it almost impossible to get good pictures of the front.

But once inside we could wander around and explore the large complex of ruins. The sun at the back of the castle was sending sunbeams everywhere through open windows or gaps where the old stone curtain wall had fallen in. The stone was a nice yellowish-buff colored sandstone, and the sunlight made the castle appear much warmer and friendlier than I expect it did in the old days.

In a small museum outside the castle we read all about the history of the castle and saw a short video covering one major battle when Edward I of England had invaded Scotland in 1300. The castle had fallen after an intensive 2-day battle, but it was interesting that a force of no more than 60 or so defenders had held off Edward's army of about 3,000 men-at-arms including 84 knights for two days.

Battered by the siege engines and trebuchets throwing small boulders at the walls, the defenders had finally surrendered. A romantic song praising King Edward says that he magnanimously gave them new clothes and their freedom, but other, less biased references suggested that he hanged some or all of the defenders from the castle ramparts, an outcome much more likely to occur in that time and place in my opinion.

From Caerlaverock Castle we endured a 6-hour drive through various traffic jams on the M-6 motorway (American: Interstate highway) until we finally fetched up at Shrewsbury, England, for the night. We had been curious what Shrewsbury looked like ever since reading the Brother Cadfael mysteries by Ellis Peters. Once during our drive while we were stopped dead in traffic, I watched a herd of cows calmly walking across a footbridge (hoofbridge?) across the motorway just in front of us. You could almost see them laughing at us sitting still while they were placidly walking along. With anthropocentric arrogance I started to feel superior because they were just walking home to get milked, but then I suddenly realized that we were going nowhere fast and just getting steamed!!

Once in Shrewsbury we had a tough time finding a B&B since there was a wedding in town and most rooms were taken. But after driving through town a couple of times we finally found a nice little place. Although the motorway driving was generally less stressful than the 2-lane Scottish byways I had been driving, I was still quite tired at the end of the day and not really fit to do anything other than read a book quietly for a while Monika processed our pictures. Then I updated the journal a bit and we finally turned in for the night.