The Castle & Conversations Chronicles

   This week’s update is sponsored by 3rd-born children… 3rd-born children: secretly everyone’s favorite. Now, onto this week’s update.

   It was just a regular week, Tuesday tea, daily walks (on 35 day streak of 10k steps by the way), the Hubble Table & prayer group on Wednesday. Until my grand ooting on Friday, the most notable things this week were an increase of work & someone I see almost everyday while on my walk told me I should get a dog because I walk so much.

   Now onto the grand ooting: Stirling Castle! Somehow this was the first castle I have actually entered since being here. I spent the start of my time there by getting coffee at the Unicorn Cafe & walking around the castle while avoiding the large groups of tours. I am quite grateful I got there early to do this since I got to take a lot of photos at this time making it so I could mostly stay engaged with the tour. The Secret Sterling tour was the tour I chose to do & am glad I did. Only tourists that booked the tour in advance got to participate & they took us into areas of the castle inaccessible outside of the tour. These places included one of the two moats (not with water), a gunners room that shot into said moat, the roof of the grand hall, & a personal chapel for the king & family that was later turned into a kitchen. My favorite part was learning about the defensive measures the castle had that includes 5ish killing grounds, 2 moats, 3 walls, cannons, & many positions for gunmen. I also learned that unicorns have been used a lot in the decor of the castle because it represents purity & virtue. Once finished with the castle I went into town to eat at Mamma Mia & check out the made in stirling store.

    My trip was the starting point of the realization that talking with strangers is semi-normal here & that I have started to adopt the practice as well. I think the tour consisted of only Americans & I was wearing my Tillamook cheese creamery hoodie from Oregon so I talked with some of them about how I did not in fact go to high school in Tillamook where their mascot is The Cheesemakers. On my train ride home I talked with a lovely couple from Oregon who were on their way to Glasgow to fly home after a cruise to Iceland. Saturday I spent the day in Killarnock & talked with 3 strangers there as well. The first was at a cafe I decided to try, followed by a man working at an art/framing store. Dick Institute is where I found my third conversation partner.

    A quick backstory though: Dick Institute is a library/museum in Killmarnock that I pass by every time I go into town and I have wanted to go since I first got here. There are a couple of exhibits including the following topics: the famous poet Robert Burns & his relation with the first printing press in Kilmarnock, art by local artists reacting to Robert Burns poems, an exhibit for the industries in the area mixed with world war 1 & 2 that includes an industrial loom that one of the first people I met here used to work with, & a taxidermy exhibit including a local icon Brian the Lion.

    My third conversation partner Saturday was a girl who worked there & was telling me about the place along with attempting to give me suggestions of what to do in the area. I actually talked with her twice, once before meeting the iconic Brian the Lion & once after. This leads to yet another new person I conversed with today (Sunday). It was a guest minister for this week that was also invited to lunch by the same family I spent the day with. Over the course of the afternoon, stories were exchanged & I learned that his connection with Capernwray Hall actually allowed him to camp out on the property of Ravencrest in Estes Park (which is where bestie will be attending next month). This concludes Caedmon's Chronicles of Conversations (with strangers).