On this, Day 10 of the cruise, the 15 Cruise Critic friends met at approximately 7:30 a.m. at a location on the ship and proceeded together to the location where we could board the “tenders”. (For those readers who have not sailed, at ports where the ship is unable to dock—be it because the ocean channel is not deep enough to accommodate the size or depth of the ship, or simply because there are no docks—the ship anchors off the coast and uses “tenders” to transport the passengers to land. Sometimes these tenders are the ship’s own life boats; other times they are a port-based contracted transport that the ship company hires).
A note about this port: This port is called South Queensferry and is the port city for Edinburgh, Scotland. Edinburgh is the city we had visited the previous Sat. & Sun. when we attended the performance of the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo. Therefore, we decided to use the day, anchored at South Queensferry, to visit places in the Scottish countryside. Our first glimpse of the area was the railway bridge that connects South Queensferry, which lies on the Firth of Forth, to the center of Edinburgh (about 10 miles). (In the background seen between the piers of the bridge is the Crown Princess).
This Forth Road Bridge opened in 1964, spanning 8,242 ft. It carries 1.5 million people, 600.000 cars and 200,000 goods vehicles each year. The bridge forms a crucial part of the corridor between southeast and northeast Scotland.
Our first stop was at the very beautiful Rosslyn Chapel. Rosslyn Chapel, founded in 1446 by William Sinclair, Earl of Orkney, is situated just South of Edinburgh. It is a popular visitor site and a place of historical, religious and architectural interest. Historically, the chapel is the subject of much controversy. Some historians believe that the chapel had strong links in the past with the Knights Templar. Many theories have been proposed as to the supposed existence of religious relics--some believe this includes the Holy Grail--hidden within an underground vault beneath the floor of the chapel.
The most recent theory is the most astonishing--that the chapel has buried beneath it is the mummified head of Christ, which was worshiped by the Knights Templar hundreds of years ago. The trustees of the chapel are under constant pressure to carry out excavations to find out whether there is any truth in any of the many theories about it's mysterious past.
Architecturally, Rosslyn is interesting for several different reasons. The interior of the chapel is unusually ornate for a Scottish church and is unique among it's contemporaries. Scottish religious buildings of the time were characteristically very plain in design, and although Rosslyn is essentially a Gothic building, it's fanciful decoration and exotic - some would say eccentric - ornament make it stand apart from all the others. There is evidence to suggest that many foreign craftsmen were employed in it's construction, which would account in part for some of the decorative elements that are in evidence in the building.
External views of this chapel are used in the movie, “The DaVinci Code”.
Leaving Rosslyn we then traveled to the ruins of Linlithgow Palace.
Originally built in the 12th century, the town and the Palace of Linlithgow were partially destroyed in a great fire in 1424. After the fire that same year King James I (of Scotland) started the rebuilding of this palace as a grand residence for Scottish royalty.
Mary, Queen of Scots, was born at the Palace in December 1542 and occasionally stayed there during her reign. After the union of the Scottish and British crowns (King James I of the “King James Bible”) in 1603 the Royal Court became largely based in England and Linlithgow was used very little.
This was certainly a grand palace in its day!
The grounds of Linlithgow look like a golf course and there are some very famous ones nearby—St. Andrews is just a few miles to the north…
South of the palace is St. Michael’s Chapel, a 15th century Gothic with later alterations. It is one of the largest and finest medieval churches of Scotland.
Pipes of organ inside chapel.
I would have enjoyed hearing this organ…or playing it!
Fountain in the center of square of small village of Linlithgow and pictures below of that square.
Our next stop was at the famous Falkirk Wheel.
The Falkirk Wheel, opened in 2002, is a rotating boat lift connecting the Forth & Clyde Canal with the Union Canal. The two canals were previously connected by a series of 11 locks, but by the 1930s these had fallen into disuse, were filled in and the land built upon. Building the wheel was a plan to regenerate the canals of central Scotland to reconnect Glasgow with Edinburgh.
The difference in the levels of the two canals at the wheel is 79 ft, roughly equivalent to the height of an eight-story building. The Union Canal, however, is 37 ft. higher than the aqueduct which meets the wheel, and boats must pass through a pair of locks to descend from this canal onto the aqueduct at the top of the wheel. The aqueduct could not have been positioned higher due to conflicts with the historically important Antonine Wall. For additional information link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkirk_Wheel
The Falkirk Wheel visitors’ center offers scheduled one-hour, round trip boat tours, called "The Falkirk Wheel Experience", that include passage on the wheel. The tours start below the wheel in the Forth & Clyde Canal, ascend via the wheel to the Union Canal, visit nearby areas on the Union Canal, and then return. Here, our group is seat on one such tour.
Back on the bus we traveled pass a beautiful field of roses on our way to the 16th century village of Culross.
A legend states that when the British princess (and future saint) Theneu or Enoch, daughter of the King of Lothian, fell pregnant before marriage, her family threw her from a cliff. She survived the fall unharmed, and was soon met by an unmanned boat. She knew she had no home to go to, so she got into the boat; it sailed her across the Firth of Forth to land at Culross where she was cared for by Saint Serf. He became foster-father of her son, Saint Kentigern or Mungo (d. 612).
During the 16th and 17th centuries, the town of Culross was a center of the coal mining industry. In 1575, Sir George Bruce of Carnock established, at Culross, the first coal mine in the world to extend under the sea. The mine worked with ingenious contrivances to drain the constant leakage from above. This mine was considered one of the marvels of the British Isles in the early 17th century, until it was destroyed in a storm, in 1625. By Victorian times, Culross had become something of a ghost town.
During the 20th century, it became recognized that Culross contained many unique historical buildings and the National Trust for Scotland has been working on their preservation and restoration since the 1930s.
One of the finer places in Culross Village.
At a stop on our return north toward the Edinburgh area I snapped this lovely picture of the countryside. The excursion ended about 5 p.m. with our boarding a tender to return to the ship. The ship sailed about 7 p.m. for a day “at sea”.
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