Field Trip

As part of my Archaeology of Scotland class, we had a field trip to two sites. One, for the first half of the course, was an Iron Age hillfort, and the other, for the second half of the course, was a Roman fort.

We headed off at 10 AM for Castle Law, a hillfort outside of Edinburgh. I think everyone expected it to rain, but it was actually a beautiful morning. We took a coach bus, and gradually left the city behind, passing fields and sheep until we ended up in the driveway of a farm. The bus looked quite out of place, but as it turns out, the farm was our destination.

We made our way up a hill, past some more sheep, until we reached Castle Law. The fort was rather smaller than I had expected, but the earthen ramparts were still clearly visible, and it was a dramatic site in the sun and shadows. We had been given a sheet of questions to help us explore the site, so I set about approximating the length of the fort, the height of the walls and so forth. There was also a souterrain, which is an underground passage and chamber used for storing food, which was open to the public, and was very cool. We were also able to hike up the hill next to the fort in order to see it from above. The hilltop also provided a very nice view of the surrounding countryside, which is the first time I had really seen it from such a vantage point.


After about an hour at Castle Law, we moved on to Falkirk for lunch at the Falkirk Wheel. The Falkirk Wheel is an impressive structure built to link two canals in town. It was nice to see a more modern piece of history in between our ancient visits. There was also a swan in the lower canal, with whom I spent much of my lunch hour with.


After lunch, we took a short walk up behind the Wheel to the Antonine Wall. The Roman fort of Roughcastle is along the wall in Falkirk, and we once again spread out to explore the site. The wall was quite impressive; although it was built of turf and earth, it was still very visible in the landscape. The fort itself was also quite nice. It had originally been left open after the excavation there, but they covered it up eventually. The foundations of the buildings were still visible though. There was also a civilian settlement outside Roughcastle, the remains of which were also visible, and I took a short walk into the woods beyond where the field system had been. The weather held, and all in all it was a very nice day.



In other news, a couple of weeks later, I went to see Sonata Arctica in Glasgow. It's hard to believe it's the fifth time I've seen them live, but they were still as good as they always have been, so that was a lot of fun!

Ruins and Fish (Again)

This is a long time coming, but at last I have completed the blog for my second day trip out of Edinburgh.

After my successful adventure in St Andrews, I decided to set up another trip outside of the city. I looked online and in my guidebook for some nice local ruins which would coincide with the train line. I found some quite nearby, in Dunfermline just over the Firth of Forth - a connected abbey and palace, in a town full of history. The descriptions and pictures in my sources made the site very appealing, and there was a train station right in town. It was definitely a place worth going to, in my mind.

But upon turning the page of my book, something else caught my eye - a much more modern site, but quite suited to my tastes in a very different way, and also in close proximity to my present location. That's right - the national aquarium, Deep Sea World.

So then, what to do on Wednesday?

I'd like to say I was unanimously in favor of Dunfermline, to voraciously pursue the object of my undergraduate studies. But to be honest, I was completely torn, because the aquarium website advertised some really cool features, namely an underwater tunnel, so you can "walk" on the tank floor with the fish. I've always wanted to see something like that; I only knew they existed because I know there is one in Japan - it features in more than one date scene in those spectacularly fun and sappy Asian dramas of my high school days.

What to do, what to do...well, you can imagine my pleasure when I realized that in order to get to both locations, I would be using the same train line. So my eager self pounced on this and thought, why not do both in the same day?

So I did.

Upon arriving in Dunfermline, I had to find my way to the abbey. I knew it was west about two or three blocks, and it wasn't quite 9:30, when the site opened, so I took it slow and observed my surroundings. I had landed in a residential area, and it was nice and peaceful. Modern, though. Rounding the first bend, however, I got a first taste for the town's history - the Andrew Carnegie Museum. He was born and raised in Dunfermline before making his fortune in America. It was nice to have a taste of home, however distant in the past, and I circled the museum to see if there was any information lurking about outside.

Instead, I found a path leading into a bit of a park. I later figured out that this was the Andrew Carnegie Park, which he had gifted to the town after his success. It was a beautiful clear morning - I have really lucked out with weather on these excursions - and the trees and plants still had a touch of dew on them. There was a river as well, which made the scene very idyllic. I passed by a sign at one point, informing me that William Wallace was thought to have stopped here at one point. Looking up, I saw the palace for the first time, looming over the glen on a high bank.

I kept walking, figuring I would eventually make my way up and run into the entrance. Going through what appeared to be the abbey garden, I found some stone stairs leading to the top of the ridge. Following some signs, I discovered the ruins of a tower, inhabited by a king in the Middle Ages. Only the base was left, but, being the third indication of a long history I had come across by accident in under an hour, I was quite impressed.

I moved on up to the current church, which still looked rather old, and was very impressive. After stopping to chat with a local about his cute puppy, I went inside, and was, as usual, humbled by the beauty of the interior. Grand old churches always make an impression on me. I walked around the outside a bit, to see it from every angle, and saw that the tower, on the top, reads "King Robert the Bruce." How cool. A sign said he was buried in the church, but when I inquired as to its whereabouts in the abbey gift shop, I was told that the section of the church where his tomb was happened to be closed until April. Oh well, at least I saw the outside.

I then went into the ruined abbey and palace, which was amazing, not only because of the history (apparently even Mary Queen of Scots spent some time here!) but also because of the amount of structure still intact. I could go on to describe the buildings, but I think pictures would do better justice in this case. Click on the photos to see them at full size.





After exploring for some time, I found my way into town, and strolled the streets for a while. It's a very lovely little town, and the first one I had been to without a university, so there wasn't a studenty feel about it. The buildings were mostly old, and I walked down a couple of side streets to look at the houses as well. I found a little place called Cafe Alba, where I ate lunch - a cheese and bacon panini, very tasty. By then, however, it was 1 PM, and time to move on to my second destination of the day - North Queensferry.

North Queensferry was only about a 12 minute train ride, so I was there before I knew it. I had seen loosely where Deep Sea World was located on a map, but again I was left to my own devices to find it. Fortunately there were signs for it straight away, so there was no trouble there. On my way, I crossed under the Firth of Forth train bridge, which is an impressive piece of structure, and I spent some time admiring it from my front row perspective.

I was practically the only one in the aquarium, so it was nice to have it almost all to myself. The exhibits were fabulous; I stopped to see the seals first, because they're so cute. They seemed to have a nice enclosure, and the signs said that Deep Sea World provides shelter for injured seals during recovery, which I thought was quite nice. There were a wide number of fish, sorted by location in the world, so I spent a long time wandering through that, and managed to catch part of a fish feeding that was going on at the tidal pool tank. The fish in the Amazon exhibit were absolutely huge, I had no idea they could get that big.

I lost myself in the aquarium for some time, so that I completely forgot about the underwater tunnel, until I saw that the exhibit ended with a ramp leading down. According to the website, Deep Sea World is actually an old abandoned quarry, which was sealed up and made into an aquarium some years ago. As a result, their main tank is quite large, and that's where the tunnel runs. And let me tell you - that tunnel was amazing. Half of the walkway was regular floor, but the other half was a slow moving walkway, so that you didn't have to focus on walking while looking at fish in every direction. I went through four times, and spent the better part of an hour down there. The tunnel allowed you to be a part of the environment, and the fish were literally inches away from you on the other side of the glass. The sharks were too, which made me a little nervous at first, sharks being a rather significant fear, but soon I was captivated by their grace as they wound their way through the water.

This is a stone fish; it's very good at camouflage.

After viewing the fish for as long as I could (I left as they were closing), I hopped on the train once more to return for Edinburgh. Another day well spent!

There and Back Again, part I

This is quite a long post, as I accomplished a lot today, so be warned.

So...lately I have been thinking a bit about what it means to be in Scotland. I mean, I'm here in a country across the sea from my own, studying very cool things that I can't study at home, with access to very cool places I don't normally have access to, and hearing very nice accents every day. But I've been in the doldrums for the past couple of weeks, to be honest. I mean, Edinburgh is a great city, and I am loving it. It took me an unusually long time to adjust to life here, but I have had no complaints, and have been at least trying to take advantage of the culture. But I realized the other day that while Edinburgh is a new setting for me, it is also a city - a.k.a. it's a bit more global than the rest of Scotland probably is. By which I mean, day to day, I am not being slapped in the face by Scotland. Sure, there are cars driving on the other side of the road, the kilted bagpiper on the corner and packaged pancakes in the grocery store, but when I'm going about my daily life, I still sometimes forget that there are amazing sites nearby that I can go visit, probably because I am so used to assuming they are inaccessible from my American perspective. In the past couple of weeks, this has gotten me a bit down, and I have been feeling like I'm not taking advantage of my time in Scotland very well.

On Monday I realized I was wrong to think this, and decided that I should remedy this feeling of stagnation by taking a trip out of the city for the first time - my trip to Glasgow was not exactly a cultural event, more of an in-and-out to experience what I experience in Massachusetts every year. So on Monday, I decided that on Wednesday, today, the day I don't have classes, I would take a day trip to...St Andrews!

So I did.

At 5 AM this morning my alarm went off to start my day. I packed last night, so it was more a matter of getting to the 7:00 train. I left early because I wasn't sure if the buses were running or not, in case I had to walk; they were running, as it turned out, but the stairs to the station had apparently been closed for renovation since I last taken the train, so I had to run around and find another way in. Good thing I left early. After a bit of flailing and a trip down a sketchy set of stairs, I finally reached my destination, and was settled on the train with plenty of time to spare.

The train journey was fairly uneventful, which was good. I had brought work to do, but after about 15 minutes I realized that I had never actually seen Scotland outside of Edinburgh, because I had been asleep on the plane and had gone to Glasgow at night. After only that short amount of time the train was already in the country, and I had my first look at Scottish farmland, and even the occasional ruin. The landscape was quite lovely in the light of the dawn, and there was barely a cloud in the sky. Every day here I wake up expecting rain, but we have had a streak of sunny, almost warm weather since Saturday which held through today, for which I was grateful.

St Andrews does not have a train station, but there is one in the nearby town of Leuchars. Upon reaching the end of my line, I emerged from the train to find I was the only one on the platform. Suddenly a jovial man stuck his head out of a window in the station and bid me a very good morning in that thick Scottish brogue. I figured it was a good start to a good day. He gave me directions to the bus station, and half an hour later I was standing in St Andrews across from a very nice church.

Sadly my banana and granola bar at 6 AM had not filled me as much as I had hoped, so I vowed that I would stop at the first coffee shop I saw and get a hot drink and a breakfast pastry. Unfortunately for the local businesses, the first shop I saw was Starbucks. But strangely enough, although I never go to Starbucks in the States, it has become kind of my rock in this distant land - no matter where I am, or how foreign the territory, that familiar green circle is always right around the corner. Always. Right around the corner. It has become like a little piece of home, something familiar that I can connect with. So I stopped there and, like a hobbit, had a proper second breakfast, in the form of a hot chocolate and a croissant.

There is a part of me that is very into details. This is probably one reason why I am so drawn to archaeology, among other things. Thus it should come as no surprise that, when I travel alone, I am a rather immaculate planner. I have to know absolutely everything about a trip I am taking, whether it be to another town or the store down the street, in Northampton or in Edinburgh. I need to know where my destination is, how I'm going to get there, what time the transport leaves and arrives, how to get from point A to point B and back again, how long that will take...everything must be in order before I leave. And planning a trip is something I really enjoy, because I delight in finding out these kinds of details. With this trip to St Andrews, however, I decided to try out something completely new. I decided to test my mettle by dropping myself into this small medieval town completely cold. Of course I completely planned out my train and bus schedules and bought the tickets beforehand, but I decided against even looking at a map of the town itself. I brought the address of the tourist info place as a lifeline just in case, but essentially I was on my own to discover this town.

The plan worked marvelously. I had no agenda, because I didn't know where anything was, so I spent the first part of my day just wandering the streets, keeping track of where I was, but basically if I saw something cool and old, I just went and looked at it. I knew the castle and the cathedral didn't open until 9:30, and, again, I didn't know where they were - there were signs though - so I had time to just get a feel for St Andrews. It has a great feel. There was a nice aura about the place; it just felt friendly. The town also, with all of its buildings, had a sense of long history about it, but at the same time, with the university right in its midst, there was an air of youth with so many students about. It was an interesting combination, and it somehow worked.

I found the castle after seeing some very neat buildings, and was impressed by the ruins, as I always am. I would have gone there first, but the sign said I could get a double pass for the castle and the cathedral at the visitor center of the latter, so I wound my way there. The cathedral ruins were spectacular. I could barely tear my eyes away to get my ticket and entry to the museum and bell tower. I started in the museum, which was very nicely laid out; one part was in an underground vault area, and in another part the St Andrews Sarcophagus was on display, which I had learned about in a few lectures this semester, so it was nice to see it in person.

Sadly I learned that the castle was actually closed for renovation, but I could still gain access by going on a guided tour at 11. This gave me about an hour to wander the ruins after leaving the museum. The ruins consist of the cathedral, once the largest building and most important church in Scotland, and the attached cloister. I was so drawn in by the architecture and remains that I just had to examine every detail; as a result, I had only covered the cloister and part of the cathedral by the time the tour was scheduled to start.

The tour was quite good; there were only four of us, so the guide was able to get more personal with us and answer specific questions, as well as let us wander the castle for a little while afterward. He also used to work for the National Trust, so we had that in common. I could totally relate to the couple of stories he told about his career as a site guide - the person in your tour who knows more on the subject than you do, the first solo tour you ever give which happens to be a massive group of people...although here I was thinking that 40 was bad, and it turns out he had 250.

Anyways, the St Andrews castle was great, and although it was a bit of a wreck, that made it all the more fascinating to me. It had quite a history too, becoming the home of the bishop and later the site of a number of unpleasant deaths (including the bishop's) and even a siege at the beginning of the Protestant Reformation in Scotland. There was also a rather brutal prison cell carved into solid rock below the castle with no way out. But at one point in the tour, our guide told us that in later times, it became customary to coat and paint your castle, because 1. the layer helped protect the rock, which in this case was sandstone, which is soft and prone to weathering; and 2. because pigments were extremely expensive, and using them on your house was a great way to show off your wealth. He gave an example of one castle whose great hall was recently renovated - the workers pulled some pigment remains from the original walls, analyzed it and found it to have been bright, electric yellow, in which they then proceeded to paint the restored hall. All day the image of a bright, electric yellow castle has been coming back to haunt me, and I believe that information alone has disturbed me more than the stories of gruesome deaths the castle has served witness to.

I mean seriously. Who would want a yellow castle.

After the tour, I returned to my analysis of the cathedral, and finally got through the whole thing. It really must have been a beautiful building, it is hard to believe it was purposely destroyed during the Reformation. Afterward, I went up the bell tower next to the remains, which is all that remains from the church that was there before the cathedral. Very cool. It was rather high, though, and the stairs were literally the never-ending stairs of doom. The lower section of the tower's steps are out of commission for some reason, so it starts off on this spiral metal staircase a little ways up, where you can clearly see the gap below you. But then you get onto a ledge where the normal stair picks up, so you're on the actual medieval staircase (unless it was rebuilt, I'm not sure) going straight up and around the sides of the building. But only a little way up, it bunches into a corner and goes back to a spiral staircase. Around and around and around...forever and ever and ever...it feels like you will never get to the top, because you can't see up or down, because it's a spiral and it's stone. It is also extremely narrow, so if anyone were to come the other way, there's no room to pass. Fortunately there's a handrail installed; I can't imagine climbing that in the Middle Ages with nothing to hold on to.

But the climb, though harrowing, was worth it - the view was spectacular, especially on such a clear and beautiful day; I have included a picture above. I stayed up there for a while looking at the sites and the town. On my way down, I did end up running into another visitor on her way up, and ended up going all the way to the top again because I couldn't pass her, but there were no worries. Of course her first question was "am I almost there?" At least she had someone to tell her "yes!" The stairs were an adventure going down again too, but again, thank goodness for the handrail.

I stopped to look at the stone foundations of the very first church build at St Andrews, and then it was time for lunch. I found a fish and chip shop, and treated myself to a Coke; I enjoyed my meal on a bench looking out over the ocean. It was quite scenic. I then decided to wander the town again to look at some of the shops, and this was when I found the gem of my trip, and, quite possibly, of the semester? It was that fabulous.

To be continued below...

There and Back Again, part II

So, my discovery.

I was walking down a funny little street, and came upon a used bookstore. There seem to be quite a few in St Andrews, but this one had a window full of books on the Middle Ages, so obviously I had to go in. I browsed for a little while, and found some interesting books, including a medieval mystery which had been recommended to me by a few people but which I had never gotten around to reading; that will be waiting for me at the end of the semester. But the crowning event of this stop came as I passed by the "Sports and Leisure" section.

My eye, on going through a section of books on sports, generally glances through the titles looking for the word "tennis." To my surprise, amid countless tomes on gardening and golf, I spied that beloved word on the spine of a short green book. The first sign: a book on tennis. Upon looking closer, I saw that the full title was "The Art of Lawn Tennis"; I had never heard of tennis being referred to as "lawn tennis" until I came to the UK, so to me the term seems inherently British. That was the second sign. At this point I pulled it out to look at it closer. The book looked quite old, and upon turning the first few pages, I discovered it was published in 1920 - definitely old. This was the third sign that this book was something special.

But what made this book go from "fun find" to "must have" was discovered when I flipped to the title page. And this is what I found:

The Art of Lawn Tennis

by
William T. Tilden
Champion of the World

"Champion of the World." Who these days has the gall to call themselves "champion of the world" in a printed text? It sounded so presumptuous I almost laughed. Then I did laugh, when I turned the page back and found a photograph of the author on court caught what looks like mid-pirouette, with the description beneath: "William T. Tilden: champion of the world in action."

Despite this whole "champion" business, the book is actually quite interesting in its mix of being sometimes outdated and being sometimes completely accurate, useful and sometimes profound. Despite the fact that 1920s tennis was obviously very different from today, the competitive element of the game cannot have changed much. And as this player was (as he subtly points out) a very good player in his time, he obviously knew the game and what was needed to be a champion. So amid advice such as taking a shower without pause right after a match so you don't get rheumatism or references to "the colonies", there are also pieces of the book that are rather remarkable. For me, in just flipping through the book, one sentence stood out - "Singles is a game of the imagination, doubles a science of exact angles." I've never really thought about the difference between the two games like that, but on pondering it a bit more throughout the afternoon, I think he's completely right.

So this book has turned out be not only a source of outdated entertainment, but also, perhaps, a useful tool in my own pursuit of the perfect game.

Now, you'd like to think this was the end of my story. BUT WAIT! There's more. First of all, I returned to the cathedral, which doesn't merit all that much discussion as I have already commented on it above, except that earlier I had asked a docent some questions about the site, and she didn't know the answers because she was new; she told me to come back later because the other docent knew a lot more and was, she pointed out, an archaeologist. And so my ever-growing list of archaeology careers goes up to...three! That's right, folks. I am starting to think this may not be the best field to go into.

Alright, so this is really the last element of my trip. I was taking a walk along the seaside and considering taking an earlier train back to Edinburgh, because it was 4, so most things were closing, and my train wasn't until 7:44. I didn't really know what else to do except walk around, and my feet were tired because I'd been walking around all day.

BUT THEN!

I saw a sign that brought joy to my heart. I had stumbled across the St Andrews Aquarium! This may seem a bit random, but I really love aquariums, and I'm not sure why. I love land animals, but fish don't seem to have as much personality, and inherently don't interest me as much when I read about or study them. But for some reason I find them strangely fascinating to watch; I could watch them for hours swimming back and forth. So I was quite happy when I found that this aquarium was still open for another hour, and I followed two other young women inside for some ichthyological enjoyment.

The other visitors swiftly left me behind as I sat mesmerized in front of the Amazon tank for 10 minutes. Fish are all so different from each other, but when you see them all together in a large tank like that they do seem to have a kind of community. Maybe they do have personalities. I definitely spent another 10 minutes staring down a little fish in another tank before it swam away; maybe it was examining me as well. There was a small octopus, which was very cool, and also a gigantic lobster hiding under a rock, which I didn't even notice until I read the sign which said there was a lobster in the tank.

Tragically the shark tank was being cleaned, so there were no sharks (I say that sarcastically, I am not a shark fan), but oddly enough in the same room there was a meerkat arena. Meerkats in an aquarium...but now there were some critters with personality. I knelt down, and instantly three of them scampered over and examined me closely with bobbing heads. They were pretty amusing, I spent a while with them.

There was also a seal, swimming back and forth on his back in an outdoor pool. I think seals are just about the cutest animal. Maybe it's their huge eyes, or their round heads, or their fat bodies, but they are seriously adorable. The sign said there used to be two seals, named Laurel and Hardy, but a recent storm had washed Hardy out of the tank into the ocean, and he was now living with a colony of wild seals; they were keeping tabs on him to make sure he was adjusting to the wild after living in captivity. I thought that was a good thing, but what about poor Laurel? I think he needs a friend.

The final room was tropical fish, and I found myself watching the lionfish for the remainder of my time. Those fish are incredible. They look so delicate, and their coloring is so precise; in parts they are even see-through. The detailed tendrils of their fins are beautiful when they move through the water. Of course they are highly poisonous, but quite fascinating to watch. They may be my favorite fish, other than the nudibranch.

After the aquarium, I went on a walk back down to the cathedral and went out on the jetty, as I now had a little time to kill before going back to the train station. It was nice seeing the cathedral ruins in the light of the sunset, and the jetty was peaceful at that time of day. I spent my remaining time processing my day, mostly about my impressions of the town, and also of the parts of the university I had seen as well. When I applied to study abroad, I applied to both Edinburgh and St Andrews. I ended up choosing the former mostly because it was in a city, and I was eager to experience that kind of living at some point; also a city generally has a lot of monuments and museums, and is a good place for striking out on adventures elsewhere, so I figured it would be a good place to experience Scotland for just one semester. I have not regretted my decision.

The only shadow of a regret is that, had I gone to St Andrews, I could have taken Old English this semester, which has somehow become the love of my life. I was enthusiastic about my courses here though, so, to soothe my distressed medieval soul, I ended up bringing my slim student edition of Beowulf over with me in case I got the bug to translate. But fortunately I discovered that the University of Edinburgh library has a rather nice collection of Old English texts, which I have already raided more than a few times. So with that problem solved, my attention to Edinburgh is complete and unwavering.

Yes, St Andrews has beautiful old buildings, it's true; and actually the town itself reminded me a bit of Northampton, plus a few hundred years of recorded history - it was lively and homey, not too big but not too small, and felt quite cozy. But again, this being my one semester away from Smith, I was looking for something completely different, and I have found that in Edinburgh. I would love to go back to St Andrews though, perhaps for a few days; it is a great town, and I deem this a successful and fun trip.

And I also feel inspired to go visit more places. I feel that I am prepared to go experience Scotland more fully, now that I have cracked open my shell, and, looking back, I think I really needed all that time in Edinburgh to adjust to life and get ready to explore. But now not only am I ready, but I know I'm ready. So, Scotland, here I come!

After my coursework, of course...

Yes, I know it's not the greatest picture of me, but how else do I prove I was there >:(