Craigmillar Castle

Yesterday Luke and I ventured out to visit our first Scottish castle.  This one, Craigmillar Castle, is only a league (the distance you can walk in under an hour - or about 3 miles) southeast of city centre and is very easy to get to by bus.

City centre is outlined in red.  The castle is indicated by the Google "A" pin.

The castle is a ruin, meaning that the property was abandoned and left to crumble, but it is one of the best preserved castles in Scotland.  Essentially the structure is just walls, there are no remnants of furniture or anything like that.  The historical society has added some lights to the darkest rooms and there are plaques telling you what each of the rooms are but other than that it is mostly untouched.

Over the years the castle had numerous owners who all built additions to the original structure.  Because of this, the architecture isn't always cohesive and there are lots of passageways and nooks and crannies.  The night before some friends told us that there wouldn't be a lot to necessarily look at but that it was a great place to play hide and seek.  They were right.  And there was a group of about 25 adults playing hide and seek while we were there.  It was quite amusing.

It look us about 2 hours to explore the whole of the castle going through all the little passageways and up and down all of the spiral staircases.  We had a lot of fun and are excited to visit some of the others that are close to Edinburgh.  We're waiting for a really rainy day to go explore the Edinburgh Castle but hopefully we'll be able to do that one soon - since it's right around the corner from the university.

Enjoy the pictures.  I hope they make you want to come visit us.

Stairway to the wine cellar

Great room fireplace

Chapel

Love you and miss you,
Aubs, Luke and Luther