The Endless Weekend

Stirling Castle The View From....  In August we went to Glasgow for the World Science Fiction Conference.  We stayed three days in Stirling, a city of about 40,000, with way too much history.  If you happen to be in northern England and you want to bring your army into the Scottish highlands for a little light looting you have to figure out some way of getting past Stirling.  That's why two of the biggest fights in the country's history, Stirling Bridge and Bannockburn, happened more or less within sight of the castle.  Both of them, by the way, are represented, badly, in Braveheart. One feature of the Castle is the room full of Stirling Heads, large oak medallions made around 1540 to decorate the ceiling of one room.   We took a lovely hike on the Back Walk, built in the 18th Century, the oldest publicly maintained road in Great Britain.  (It ain't a road by modern standards.  It's a nice trail.) The bench honors (?) John Damian, an alchemist ...