Loch Leven Castle

Went to Loch Leven Castle today.  This is on an island and is where Mary Queen of Scots was held as a prisoner and later made a daring escape.  Of course romantic as this is, she was a foolish woman, and her escape led her to throw herself on her cousin Elizabeth’s mercy, plot against her and then get her head cut off.  If she had just stayed put she might have had a happier life. But who am I to comment, I haven’t always made the best life decisions myself.

Anyway, I loved a book I had about this as a child (“Captive Queen of Scots” by Jean Plaidy) and had always wanted to see the castle which I thought was in some remote part of the highlands – I was very surprised to discover it is in fact near Milnathort about half an hour from here.

We went out on the little boat.  There were hundreds of swans on the loch.

The castle itself was quite scenic – with lots of rather alarming steep and narrow stairs.

Then we went to the RSPB nature reserve at the base of the loch.  They had possibly the most complicated parking machine I have ever seen – I was starting to get the impression that they wanted me to buy a year’s subscription just in order to pay for half an hour’s parking.  Then it turned out it was £4 for the whole day even if you only wanted half an hour.  J was getting quite tetchy about this until I convinced him it was all in a good cause.

We didn’t see many birds because we didn’t bring binoculars; we did, however see some lovely dragonflies and a huge hairy caterpillar.  So that was alright.