A castle and a band (or two)

Just a post to document a couple of ‘adventures’ recently.

Dundonald Castle

First, looking through the Historic Scotland handbook, I noticed a castle not 15 minutes from home so, the first sunny day, I popped in the car and made my way to Dundonald Castle. The castle is not large (compared to Stirling) but still had plenty of interest. There is a guide (human) at the castle and, since I was the only visitor there when I arrived, I had my personal tour. It was enjoyable as I already knew a fair bit about castles, architecture and history so was able to have a good dialogue rather that just listening to the spiel. The lower great hall has an impressive barrel vault with flat stones rather than shaped like most ceilings. It didn’t look that secure but it’s stood for 600 and more years so I guess it was safe.

The Orange March

Then, on the following Saturday, I noticed that there was an Orange association march through Kilwinning. Bands from all over Ayrshire and Glasgow march through somewhere and, this year, it was our town’s turn. Since it was happening two hundred metres from home, I thought I would watch. For the best part of an hour, different pipe bands marched past. It was enjoyable even though it felt a bit odd to me – being non-religious, I couldn’t care less what religion our monarch is. But it was different, not the sort of thing you would expect to see outside of Northern Ireland.