Scotland - Day 13

Borders

I went down to Gretna Green with Beth's family on Thursday. It was one of the longer, less scenic drives on the trip. Of course you can't go to Gretna Green without seeing a wedding or two, and that day there were indeed two weddings at the Old Blacksmith's Shop famous for 250 years for elopements.

After shopping around for a bit and eating lunch, we parted ways with the walkers once more and ventured onward to Caerlaverock Castle. There we viewed the display discussing the history of the castle. Being near the border, it had to be defended from the English several times and finally fell in 1640. It surprised me that it was rather triangular in shape rather than squared. We all enjoyed exploring the different levels of the ruin. Caerlaverock Castle was my favorite castle of the trip because it was exactly what I imagine a traditional castle in ruins to be like. The four corners had turrets topped with battlements, and it was surrounded by a moat.

By this point in the trip, I had done all the things I wanted to do and was expecting to actually get to do except for one key thing -- dance. The first chance, the time was wrong; next chance, there weren't enough dancers; then, too many were too tired; then, the Waverley was not quite like we expected; and we didn't have any verification that the last planned dance was actually going to take place. I decided to do what I could to remedy this, so Thursday morning before leaving the cottages I pulled out the list of summer dancing and a map to see if there was any way we could make it to something, anything, before I left. I found a possibility and mentioned it to Beth. I didn't want to push the issue, so I didn't know for sure if we were going to do it until I heard mention of Strathaven on the way back from Caerlaverock. We pulled into town, got directions to the church, and had time for supper before the dancing started. It was really just a dance class somewhat like our own Thursday nights although the dance teacher, Miss Allison, was a bit more structured and picky than Beth. They did a lot of dances that were new to the locals, so we weren't the only ones just learning the dances. They were very friendly and asked us to dance almost every dance. Beth even brought one of the dances, The Belle of Bon Accord, back, and we are learning it now.