Wrong time of the year for Castles.

Part of the romance of living in Europe, and particularly Scotland is to vist those wonders of the middle ages (and the fakes of the later centuries) castles. When we holidayed in Australia years ago a tourist brochure advertised what was referred to as the Bli Bli Castle. Being a lover of all things medieval, I thought this to be the ideal place to take the family to. The Bli Bli Castle was a cinderblock mockery of my hopes. Its crenellated walls were a cheap facade and extended only as far as the drive-by viewer could glimpse; the remainder was a corrugated iron roofed wooden shed.
When we came to live in Scotland my dream was to visit real castles, with histories going back further than someone's entrepreneurial uncle. Aberdeenshire is unique in that it has the highest concentration of castles in all of Scotland, and we were salivating at the thought of being able to drive a half hour down the road to see the fortified stone homes of noble knights and lords. Being a clever man (?) I bought a family membership to the National Trust for Scotland, the keepers of most of the castles in the region. This one off price enabled our whole family to visit each and every castle on their lists free of charge. As the normal admission price for these tourist attractions are quite expensive, we would only have to visit 2 of the properties to get our money's worth. An easy deal, or so we thought.
Another of the strange things about Scotland, and probably northern Europe in general, is that when the seasons drift toward winter, things close down. Among these things that close from the end of September onward are the castles. And these magnificent monoliths, which survived the bitterest winters for hundreds of years, also close at seemingly random days, the frequency of which can only be ascertained by actually rocking up and then being denied entrance, usually by a rather bewildered gardener who tries to patiently explain that it should be obvious that the attraction should be shut as it is the 8th day of the Autumnal equinox falling on a day beginning with a letter in the first half of the alphabet. "If you just come back tomorrow we will be open all day."
Such was a certain Friday when the Doris family packed up the car to visit a rather picturesque stronghold (proudly awarded 5 stars in the National Trust Guide Book). It was a beautiful sunny day, the sky was blue, the weather was warm and the kids were not complaining throughout the 20 minute countryside drive. We arrived with a few cars in the car park (usually a good sign that you have not chosen to visit on a day when the whole region is being used by the Ministry of Defense for live fire training exercises) and merrily walked down the path to the castle gate, waving at other families eating picnic lunches and enjoying the scenery. The castles gate, while wide open, was curiously devoid of life and we were not sure if we had come to the right entrance. We wondered in looking for the ticket office and ran into an example of the above mentioned gardener. Of course the property is closed, if we would like to come back tomorrow, blah, blah, blah. Disappointed, we sauntered back to the car to check the guide book for another castle in the area we would go to. As luck would have it, our second choice for the day was just a 10 minute drive away (eat your heart out all those making whole day trips to see the Bli Bli Castle). We made the quick journey and were excited to see even more cars and people meandering down to the main entrance...... to stop and peer at a makeshift sign telling all and sundry that, due to changes in the opening times, this fortification was also closed today. We began to have that nagging suspicion that our National Trust subscription was the latest in a series of Nigerian money scams designed to make you buy tickets to places that had really no intention of letting you in. We sat in the manicured grounds and gazed wistfully at the walls and windows, the inside of which we would not see today. Fortunately we were not far from the home of our ex-Doulos friend Rebecca and so we phoned and told her we would be coming to drown our sorrows in coffee and chocolate biscuits. The kids meanwhile decided to gather sticks and stones from the gardens and pile them up onto the lawn, an act of boredom relief that I would normally have discouraged except that I now saw it as my quiet but alas, impotent protest at the injustice of the Scottish tourist industry in general. It was the end of September and most of the historic properties our subscription had paid for would be closed after today for the next 5 months, until warmer weather brought them out of their imposed hibernation. It was now the wrong time of the year for castles and our failed expedition to see at least one of them with the kids could not be corrected till Easter next year.

While this particular saga denied our children the real castle experience, the adults of the Doris family did manage to get to some castles earlier on, while the kids were in school. The pictures on this page are testimony to our earlier success. Enjoy.