How to see Edinburgh, Scotland, in just one day? Go from chapel to castle to pub
Rosslyn Chapel and Edinburgh Castle make a great start if you’re new to Scotland, but we needed a pub and cemetery -- along with a hint of Harry Potter -- to round out the day property
We were overmatched.
We were three families with a single free day in Scotland. Scotland had highlands, lowlands, lochs, firths, castles and abbeys by the dozen, haggis and bagpipes, tweeds and sheep, golf and the ghost of Mary, Queen of Scots.
Scotland had too much.
So we kept it simple. With the help of Ian Byers of Stravaigin Scotland tours, we built a day in March around just three buildings — one at the heart of Edinburgh, two on its fringes — and hoped they would click with five parents, one 18-year-old, one 11-year-old and two 10-year-olds.
Our plan went sideways within the first two hours. But it was for a good reason: We wanted more time everywhere.
By day’s end, our abandoned lunch spot had become a dinner destination. We had come to understand that the Stone of Destiny is not a forgotten Harry Potter volume. We had found an address that fired the imaginations of both William Wordsworth and Dan Brown. And then there was the bowling.
It would have been tidy to start with Edinburgh Castle, which dates back about 1,000 years and is a centerpiece of Scottish history. But not us. We had spent the previous night in Glasgow, so before we reached the castle, we paused at Roslin, a wee town eight miles south of downtown Edinburgh.
Rosslyn Chapel
The big draw in Roslin — to the annoyance of copy editors everywhere —is Rosslyn Chapel. It’s unclear how those spellings went separate ways, but authorities agree that wealthy William St. Clair started building the chapel in 1446. It’s been on a stately yet crazy ride ever since.
It’s not a big chapel — about 40 feet by 70 feet, no taller than two stories at its tallest point. But it has flying buttresses, Gothic pinnacles and all sorts of carvings. Those figures include your basic biblical characters, dragons, gargoyles, waltzing skeletons, bagpipe-playing angels, scores of little green men, the seven deadly sins, an elephant, a two-humped camel and more.
We happened to arrive on a half-cloudy day. Moment to moment, the stained glass shone, then dimmed, while the shadows sharpened, then faded — perfect effects for a property with a checkered history.
Guide Neil Hamilton explained how, for nearly 40 years, the site’s stonemasons chiseled confounding details into this structure. In fact, they were still at work when their patron died.
That stopped the project. And then came the Protestant Reformation, bearing waves of anti-Catholic violence and vandalism.
By 1600 the chapel’s altars had been destroyed, and the building was no longer operating as a church. By the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the overgrown, weather-ravaged building was a tourist attraction.
Passing poets and painters (including Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, William Wordsworth and J.M.W. Turner) turned up regularly to muse upon the ruins. Eventually, Queen Victoria herself dropped in and proclaimed that somebody ought to preserve them.
By the 1860s, the building had been reborn as an Episcopal church. Along the way, many old carvings were lost. A lot of stained glass was gained. And then came rumors of Christian skulduggery — the idea that the Masons, or some other secret society, had hidden something priceless, and perhaps theologically inconvenient, in the vaults beneath the chapel.
Is there evidence? No. But in 2003 a little-known author named Dan Brown made the chapel a key location in his novel “The Da Vinci Code.” The rest is publishing history — about 80 million copies sold. Tom Hanks starred in the 2006 film, part of it shot on location at the chapel (which, by the way, the St. Clair family still owns).
There are more tourists at Rosslyn Chapel these days, and there have been more upgrades in recent years too. In fact, Hamilton said this summer would be the first in years with no scaffolding on the building.
I loved the look of the place and the half-blurred fact and fiction. The younger kids went for the animals, and not just those carved in stone. As we searched for seats, my daughter, Grace, 11, and her friend Jessie, 10, found and befriended William, the chapel cat, curled up on a pew.
“He was black and white,” Grace reported. “He was right behind us. We almost sat on him.”
Info: Rosslyn Chapel
Edinburgh Castle
I called Edinburgh Castle a building, but it’s really an anthology of buildings raised in various centuries.
It’s the one place in Edinburgh that every visitor should at least stroll through, for the history within and the panorama below, with the Firth of Forth (a body of water) sprawled on the horizon.
Historians think the volcanic rock beneath the castle has been a gathering place for perhaps three millenniums. We filed quickly through the oldest building within the castle walls, St. Margaret’s Chapel (about 1130), before lingering much longer in the castle.
After all, the Royal Palace (15th century) is where visitors can enter the Crown Room and gawk at the Honours of Scotland (Scotland’s crown jewels, including a crown, scepter and sword more than 450 years old) and the Stone of Destiny, a breadbox-sized seat upon which monarchs were enthroned for many generations.
Invading English King Edward I grabbed it and spirited it out of Scotland in 1296, and it didn’t return to Edinburgh (from Westminster Abbey) until 1996.
The castle also has much to tell about Mary, Queen of Scots (who ruled from 1542 to 1567 before her execution in England in 1587), and the many centuries of battle over the castle between the Scots and the English.
The last reigning Scottish monarch to spend a night in the castle was Charles I in 1633.
Be sure to give yourself two or three hours to do the castle, and three hours or more to meander down the Royal Mile, which runs from the castle to the Palace of Holyroodhouse.
And leave time to pause at Greyfriars Kirkyard cemetery, where author and Edinburgh resident J.K. Rowling often walked while writing early volumes in her “Harry Potter” series.
This got everybody’s attention, especially the graves marked Riddell and McGonagall (more or less matching names of characters in the books) and the spooky view of a grand old Hogwartian school with 17th century turrets. It’s called George Heriot’s School. If it didn’t inspire Rowling, it certainly should have.
We could have used more time on the Royal Mile. I wish we hadn’t frittered away crucial minutes at the castle, waiting for the firing of the 1 o’clock gun, a tradition that left us unmoved. (A man in a blue uniform stands at a cannon-sized gun and fires a blank. A puff of smoke drifts away. End of spectacle.) I was the one who suggested hanging around to see the gun fired. My bad.
Info: Edinburgh Castle
Sheep Heid Inn
We were supposed to have lunch at the Sheep Heid Inn. It’s a pub and restaurant in the village of Duddingston, on the edge of Edinburgh, and by the time we approached it was nearly sunset.
Though the Sheep Heid’s exterior was nothing fancy, its interior was snug and casual enough for the children yet sophisticated enough to give the adults hope that dinner might be quite nice.
And so it was — upscale pub grub and some fancy steaks, with main dishes 9 to 19 pounds, or about $13 to $27.
While we ordered and ate, guide Ian Byers, who had steered us this way, explained that the Sheep Heid may be the oldest licensed pub in Scotland, with historical references dating to 1360. (It was significantly revamped in 2011.)
As Byers spoke, however, I heard strange, chaotic sounds drifting across the pub’s courtyard.
It was bowling. More specifically, it was skittles, a predecessor of the bowling Americans know. It turns out that the Sheep Heid has been hosting skittles matches for centuries, and its two-lane skittles alley dates to about 1880.
For 20 pounds, about $29, you can take over both lanes for an hour, but you’ll be rolling balls without finger holes, setting your own pins and keeping your own score, because this is basically a 19th century operation.
By the time we had finished dinner, the lanes were open. It was a no-brainer. For kids (and parents) who had spent hours traveling by minibus, hearing about ancient history and keeping relatively quiet, this was joyous release.
Balls rolled. Pins flew. Hollers resounded, and selfies were shot. Byers, a former taxi driver who has been leading tours for several years, seemed stunned by the euphoria surrounding him.
Although we took over the lanes for only about 30 minutes, we needed this burst of sanctioned mayhem. A month later, when I asked my daughter what she remembered most from that day, the first word out of her mouth was “skittles.”
Maybe I could have made the occasion a bit more educational by pointing out that in the 19th century writers Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson drank here. Or that even longer ago, Mary, Queen of Scots, and her son, James VI, are said to have stopped by often (though not together).
Or I could have mentioned that in the old days, Duddingston was where local sheep were slaughtered, and local cooks were known for their sheep’s head recipes.
But sometimes, Dad does know when to shut up.
Info: Sheep Heid Inn, 43-45 the Causeway, Edinburgh
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Twitter: @mrcsreynolds
If you go
THE BEST WAY TO EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND
From LAX, United, Delta, British, KLM, American and Lufthansa offer connecting service (change of planes) to Edinburgh. Restricted round-trip fares from $1,275, including taxes and fees.
Stravaigin Scotland tours, stravaigin-scotland.com. For a day-long tour in an eight-seat minibus, the price is about $700.
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