After our morning classes we had a house field trip to visit Craigmillar Castle in the nearby town of (you guessed it) Craigmillar. The house hosted many group events like this to help immerse us into the culture of Scotland and learn about its history - what made them who they are today - and also about the present - what they are proud of.
If it is one thing they have going for them is immaculate castles that are still standing. I visited a couple more on my trip there and to my shock (or just flat out comparing them to Ireland) they were in tack and easy to understand the flow of the castle as you got deeper into it.
It was a self guided tour of the castle and it was interactive and reminded me a lot of Game of Thrones as we walked across the outlook of the front end or went through the many halls that opened up to a huge gathering area with - of course - a giant tree (just like the weirwood tree from House Stark). This castle though, was part in the Netflix series Outlander - most of which was filmed in Scotland after they had rejected HBO from filming more of GOT there so they moved their production to Ireland as noted in previous entries.
Enough about TV shows, Craigmillar castle was built in the 15th century and only started out as a tower house - as other families moved in the house over the years they added onto it to make it what we see today.
It was interesting to see as you were at the top of the watch tower, in every which direction you looked you could see the other castles surrounding Edinburgh on the horizon, and we learned that this was the castle that would start the fire signals if enemies were coming - so they could help protect the city. Pretty cool right? We even got to see the sea from te top of the towers - a bay city called North Berwick and the castle on an island on the sea. (I will be bringing up this city again in later posts).
Overall, it was a successful first trip with the house. Got to get to know some of the girls better and see more of what Scotland had to offer!
