We spent two and a half days of our vacation in Scotland at Dalhousie Castle & Spa. It's in a gorgeous location in the Midlothian area outside of Edinburgh. The walls of the foundation and the vaults of the castle are from the original building which was constructed in the 13th century. The main parts of the current castle were built in 1450. The land surrounding the castle and the castle itself have a long history dating from 1140 - there's not really enough space here to type it up but feel free to check it out Dalhousie Castle History.
The area surrounding the castle is just lovely. This is a photo of the view from our room. We were looking down on the little river and park area.
We took a walk around the grounds after we arrived. Everything was blooming and green and the weather was perfect: crisp and bright. Here are some snaps of the surrounding countryside:
We really took advantage of our time at Dalhousie to just relax and unwind. After our walk we hung outside for a bit just reading while soaking up the sun, the breeze and the scenery. For dinner we tried out the hotel's Orangery restaurant. It was pretty good - not oustanding, but better than most of the meals we've had in Spain. The hotel has a fine dining restaurant called the Dungeon Restaurant. It's in the barrel vaulted dungeons of the castle and is a pretty dramatic location. However, we had read some lukewarm reviews of the restaurant (which is also pretty expensive) and decided to skip it. We had our romantic "anniversary" dinner at The Secret Garden in Edinburgh the night before and could not have asked for a better meal. Something to keep in mind if you ever decide to head out to Dalhousie castle is that if you don't drive your own car, you're pretty much stuck at the castle for meals and activities. (Unless you want to pay for an expensive cab ride back into town). For us, it was fine as we had planned to use the time to relax - and we did!
Our second day at Dalhousie Castle we went falconing! Yep, falconing. The castle has a falconry center with a pretty impressive stock of birds. We flew falcons, kestrels and a variety of owls (they're also birds of prey). This is the castle's falconer, Julie. The woman is a walking encyclopedia on birds of prey. We were really impressed with her knowledge, her bird handling skills and her sense of humour. The woman is a kick in the pants!
Here are some shots of some of the falcons kicking it on their stands and waiting to work out their wings:
Here are a couple pictures of the birds in action - or as in action as we could manage to capture with our camera:
This little cutie was just a baby and not old enough yet to fly around. She just hopped on the table where we had our coffee break and climbed all over everyone.
I wish we could have captured photos of the little kestrel that Julie took out to show us their hunting techniques. This little bird flew so fast and swooped down from a really spectacular height to attack her "prey" (it was a little ball on a string - we didn't see the birds attack any live animals. Although, Julie said that once in a while the birds DO go after a rabbit hopping around the property in the middle of one of her demonstrations. She said a few people were traumatized by this at Easter.) I really enjoyed being so close to these birds and seeing what they're capable of. It was a great experience.
Later that afternoon, we hit the spa. Hubby got a massage that he said was great and I tried out all of the spa amenities - steam bath, hydropool, foot bath, etc. Then I sat in the solariumin - which looks out over the gorgeous castle grounds - in my fluffy white robe, drank herbal tea and read trashy British tabloids. A perfect end to the day! The spa is stylish and relaxing. I don't have any pictures though as I thought it might freak people out to have me snap them in the steam bath. We had another nice meal that night in the Orangery and headed out the next morning back to Edinburgh for another day and a half of sight seeing. I snapped a few photos of the inside of the castle before we left:
This is a picture of the little chapel inside the castle. There were three weddings in the 2 plus days that we stayed at the castle. They were all really pretty and because of the weddings we enjoyed bagpipe music every day were there. As an interesting side note, Julie told us that you can pay an extra fee and have one of the falcons deliver your wedding rings to the best man during the ceremony. That's a pretty original wedding memory!
I'll put up a post about our last day in Edinburgh and our final round of sight seeing later. Hope you're enjoying the pics!
Jodie, Your mom sent us your blog site and we really enjoyed it. We have one but I have not figured out how to import pictures yet. Someone smater that I am will have to help.
We're in the final month of our 6 months in England (near Stratford upon Avon). Our blog site is http://harmonsinengland.blog.com
Love to hear from you,
Dick and Nadine Harmon
Posted by: Dick Harmon | June 15, 2007 at 01:24 PM