Historic Scotland Castle/Abby Count

We've been on a bit of a "Castle Spree" lately, so we thought we'd lump those all together in one page for your lumpy reading pleasure.  You may notice that "Castle Spree" is not on the list below, although we're hoping to visit there soon, if we can find it.  We'd also like to visit Castle Stalker, but that one may be made up as well.  Check this space and we'll let you know.  You also may notice from the title above that we've called this page a big long name that you can read for yourself, but it may require some explanation.  The first word is "historic," which means, roughly, "Your kids will be forced to learn about this in so-called 'History' classes in future."  The second word is 'Scotland,' which is actually an ancient name for the Gaelic folks who first moved to Scotland from Ireland, given them by the Romans who were roamin' there at the time.  The word "Scoti" is Latin for thief, which is what the Romans thought of those early Highland settlers, till they started ramming swords and other such insults into said Romans, who promptly went back to England where they found the fish and chips to be of "a slightly less greasy nature" according to Odyssyus, a well-known Roman soldier of the time.  Ha!  Occasionally you will get a true fact or two if you read through this site long enough (the scoti thing is the true part--I thought it might help to identify those for you).

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that Scotland is historic, but that's not why this page is so titled.  The title comes from an organization within the British Government, which has the sole function of creating paperwork for other people to fill out, then file, then fill out a form to tell where the original forms are filed, then another form to catologue the filed files form, etc.  Oh, and their other sole purpose is to manage several historic sites within Scotland, thus the name "Historic Scotland."  "Historic" by the way, simply means that we know the history.  For example, a historic site may be one where we know that little Andy MacDonald killed his first grasshopper in 1275, while the distant location where Mary Queen of Scottish Terriors gave birth to the future King of Scotland (or possibly England--nobody was quite sure at the time, or to this day for that matter) is quite unknown and thus is not "historic."  See the point I'm trying to make?  Me neither.  Anyway, Historic Scotland is an organization, and you can purchase a membership to said organization which entitles you to visit all these locations for free, even if you are not wearing pants (well that's what the brochure says).  We have such a membership, and are trying to visit most or all of the locations listed on our Historic Scotland map.  There are like 74 different places listed, and we've so far visited about 8.  If you add in all the made up locations, we may have some difficulty reaching our goal.

For the most part, Historic Scotland manages Castles and Abbeys, which are both very historic, as well as being in Scotland.  Many of the castles were built in strategic locations to stop foreign invader types, and Stirling, Edinburgh and Dumbarton would fit into this category.  Most were also built on sites of very old (like, when Strom Thurmond was a wee lad) Pictish (the very first Scots) or even prehistoric forts.  Lucky for Historic Scotland that those PREhistoric forts were destroyed, or otherwise they wouldn't be allowed to manage the sites (at least not without lots of paperwork).  Other castles were family dwellings, built by Lords and Barons and Counts and your other money and land hoarding types, and Bothwell and Doune Castles fit into this category.  They are also quite impressive, although usually somewhat smaller because they didn't have taxpayer dollars and gigantic defense contractors from California to work with.  These large land barons did have lots to fear from outside invaders, however, which usually meant that they needed a place to hole up whenever the big family down the road got out of sorts with them.  This happened quite a lot, actually, and some of the nastiest battles in Scotland were fought between warring clans.  By the way, The Warring Clans would be a good name for a rock band, don't you think?  Also, another good name for a rock band would be the Warring Colons, which is what I accidentally typed the first time I was trying to type warring clans.