A Wee Tour of Scotland

This year I decided to go on a short tour of Scotland, taking in both the Lowlands and the Highlands. Because I had a limited time to take in the attractions I decided to start on the West Coast of Scotland. I saw a few famous castles and an abbey before going to view Glen Nevis, a wonderful and scenic moor at the foot of Ben Nevis, the tallest mountain in Scotland, just outside Inverness. I finished my trip with a visit to the last place in Britain where a civil war had been fought.

My trip started when I went to Dumfries and Galloway on the south coast, a county that borders on England. I already knew a little bit of the history of the area, and I wanted to see one of the historical buildings I had seen on the internet. This was Sweetheart Abbey.

New Abbey, also known as Sweetheart Abbey, lies eight miles south of Dumfries. It was founded in 1275 by Dervorguilla of Galloway, daughter of Alan, Lord of Galloway. She did so in memory of her husband John de Balliol.

His embalmed heart was buried alongside her in a casket of ivory and silver when she died. The monks at the Abbey renamed the Abbey in tribute to her. The couple's son, John, became king of Scotland. His reign was tragically short. The graves became lost over the years of depredations.

New Abbey is made of local sandstone and was founded as a daughter house to Dundrennan Abbey. The Novum Monasterium, New Monastery, became known as the New Abbey.
There is a small village beside New Abbey. It took its name after the abbey and is also called New Abbey. If you walk through the village to the other end, you will come upon a corn mill. It has been fully restored to working order, and is used regularly during the summer to show visitors how oatmeal is produced.

I was particularly interested in the corn mill for the simple reason that my father was a miller and when I was young I used to go to his work when he forgot his sandwiches and I loved seeing the milling process. The big hoppers into which the grain was fed, the grinding machines and the large lorries that transported the grain were all fascinating to me, but so were the ropes and pulley's they used within the building. Incredibly, even though it is hundreds of years old, the New Abbey corn mill did not look that much different from the one dad worked in.

I left Dumfries and Galloway and travelled to just outside Ayr, in the county of Ayrshire, where I found Culzean Castle and Country park, which

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