Dunkeld and a mini-rant

For our trip this week, J and I went to Dunkeld.  It was a lovely day and the leaves on the trees are now a riot of colour.

Dunkeld itself is an incredibly beautiful little town.  But lordie, lordie – not a nice place either to drive around or to get in and out of.  Even on a Friday in October it was packed with tourists who had parked their cars solidly down one side of the street – leaving plenty of room for an Aygo – but not so much for the big SUVs coming the other way.

First of all, we went to look at the Cathedral – which is actually now a Church of Scotland parish church and therefore not the seat of a Bishop.  Regardless, it was a lovely peaceful place.  On the way we saw an attractive fountain.

Then the church itself – the pictures show the choir area which is now an active church where as the nave is a gloomy romantic ruin – another one of that “great democratic hero” Cromwell’s achievements.

The gentleman on the stone bier is the “Wolf of Badenoch” who ruled his lands “with murder and mayhem”.  This does not sound a very profitable way of going about it – all the best tyrants know you do better with tax collectors, the secret police and nosy neighbours.

We had a look at the Tay which we have now seen in various guises – it surprised me how huge it still is so far from the sea.

Most importantly as we were getting cold (yes it was very chilly in spite of the sun) and hungry, we went to a little tea shop called “The Cloutie Dumpling” and had – guess what?

Well J had it anyway, I had a cheese scone.

Then after some brief difficulty getting back on to the A9 we went to Perth where J went to see the Stone of Destiny (it is a great exhibition for anyone who has not been).  Perth Museum is nice and obviously well funded, but they suffer from the modern day curse of feeling it necessary to apologise for slavery and colonialism.  We are not the slavers, we are not responsible for what our ancestors did, “black” is an adjective and is not spelled with a capital, and “enslaved people” is a horrible euphemism.  Calling something what is actually was “black slavery” does not make it any the less an awful thing or denigrate the suffering of the people who experienced it.  So sorry.