Scotland - Day 10

This day we went to St. Andrew's Castle and Cathedral and the Discovery, which is a ship that was built in Scotland and then went from there to Antarctica to explore. First we went to St. Andrew's Castle.

This is a sketch of St. Andrew's Castle.

A castle was at St. Andrew's at least in 1189, and maybe before. The castle was taken by the English in 1296, but then recaptured by the Scots in 1314. The castle was once more taken by the English in the 1330's. The English were strengthening the castle around 1336, and then Sir Andrew of Moray recaptured it after a three-week siege. The castle probably remained in ruins and deserted until Bishop Walter Trail started rebuilding it.

This is a picture of the Castle from the Cathedral.

The castle was completed about1400. Bishop Trail died there in 1401. There was a mine and counter mine built there when the castle was being sieged between 1546-7.

A picture of the mine in St. Andrew's castle.

We spent about 1 1\2 hours there and then we left and went to St. Andrew's Cathedral. St. Andrew's was first built as St. Rile's church, and was very small. The church was claimed by the Augustinians, and soon they decided it was too small for what the bishops desired. They started making it bigger and ended up building Scotland's largest cathedral. The work actually took 150 years to complete. Shortly after the cathedral was completed, half of it was blown down by a gale. When John Knox preached a sermon there the people got so angry they started destroying the furniture. Later the cathedral was destroyed by siege.

This is a sketch of what the cathedral might have looked like.

After we had been at the cathedral for 1 1/2 hours we left to go to the Discovery. The Discovery was built in Dundee in 1901. Captain Robert Falcon Scott took Wilson and Shackleton with him. They headed for Antarctica and reached it in 1902. The Discovery was frozen in ice until 2 rescue ships went out there to rescue them. We spent about 1/2 an hour there since they were about to close.

Captain Joshua trying to sail the ship

I really liked the Discovery because it was like the real ship, and because you could actually go on it. We ate dinner at a hotel on our way to the condo outside of Inverness in Aviermore in the Highlands of Scotland.