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TheTamshee: came across this character while visiting one of the finest castles Scotland has to offer. Spooked the Indy kids, they thought it was dad chopping a few logs. Can you name the Castle ? It is one of the largest and most important castles, both historically and architecturally, in Scotland.
The castle sits atop a volcanic crag, which forms part of the ???????? Sill geological formation. It is surrounded on three sides by steep cliffs, giving it a strong defensive position. Its strategic location, guarding what was, until the 1930s, the farthest downstream crossing of the River Forth, has made it an important fortification from the earliest times. Most of the principal buildings of the castle date from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. A few structures of the fourteenth century remain, while the outer defences fronting the town date from the early eighteenth century. Several Scottish Kings and Queens have been crowned in this new city, including Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1543. There have been at least eight sieges of this Castle, including several during the Wars of Scottish Independence, with the last being in 1746, when Bonnie Prince Charlie unsuccessfully tried to take the castle. The Castle is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, and is now a tourist attraction managed by Historic Scotland.
A fascinating and very important collection of over 30 Pictish carved stones have been carefully cleaned and conserved and are now on display in their new museum in the charming village of St Vigeans 0.5m north of Arbroath off the A92. Crossing the 17th century footbridge from the car park into sleepy St. Vigeans, with the only sound coming from the waters of the Brothock burn, it is hard to believe that this Angus village outside Arbroath was once the centre of a royal estate and a huge religious importance, bustling with prayerful pilgrims and monks. April-sees the re-opening of Historic Scotlands museum after a major refurbishment. The museum houses 38 carved stones, which had once stood up on the old church mound to broadcast early messages of the true Christian faith. The stones are among the last and very finest expressions of Pictish art, which makes them tremendously important part of our national collection of the earliest art of Scotland. It is not only what is inscribed on the stones that is important, but why they came to be there in the first place. Over the last two years Dr Jane Geddes of Aberdeen University has been tasked with unlocking the whole picture. Through various approaches such as studying the geology of the stones and the lettering carved on them-her team, all came to the same conclusion: that the site was a centre of power, worship and pilgrimage way before the founding of the nearby Arbroath Abbey in 1174 by King William the Lion.
TheTamshee: came across this character while visiting one of the finest castles Scotland has to offer. Spooked the Indy kids, they thought it was dad chopping a few logs. Can you name the Castle ? It is one of the largest and most important castles, both historically and architecturally, in Scotland. 
The castle sits atop a volcanic crag, which forms part of the ???????? Sill geological formation. It is surrounded on three sides by steep cliffs, giving it a strong defensive position. Its strategic location, guarding what was, until the 1930s, the farthest downstream crossing of the River Forth, has made it an important fortification from the earliest times. Most of the principal buildings of the castle date from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. A few structures of the fourteenth century remain, while the outer defences fronting the town date from the early eighteenth century. Several Scottish Kings and Queens have been crowned in this new city, including Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1543. There have been at least eight sieges of this Castle, including several during the Wars of Scottish Independence, with the last being in 1746, when Bonnie Prince Charlie unsuccessfully tried to take the castle. The Castle is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, and is now a tourist attraction managed by Historic Scotland.
