Scone Palace - Twilight Illuminations

For Halloween weekend, Scone Palace held a Twilight Illuminations event. It was a taster for a bigger and better event for next year, I believe. I was lucky enough to get a free invite, a perk of being a local B&B I suppose.  I understand the creative director for the ever popular Enchanted Forest event at Pitlochry was involved.  I enjoyed it, it was a crisp October evening and very busy. The lighting was very well done around the grounds with the highlights being the Graveyard and Moot Hill. There were actors taking part and my favourite was Lady Macbeth.

The Wallace Monument - Stirling

As part of our Trossachs tour, where I never actually did a fraction of what I had planned, we paid a visit to the Wallace Monument.  Last time I was up it was many years ago. We decided to walk the dogs up to the top and purchase our tickets at the entrance. In my stupidity I purchased a 1 adult and 3 children and then declared to the lady I was going up with one child and then the other two would go up whilst I and first child looked after the dogs. That was a mistake because children have to be accompanied, in hindsight my eldest could easily pass as older, but the tickets were bought and the lady knew they were all children. The result was I had to go up twice. It's a very long and winding spiral stone staircase, but it was quite enjoyable making the journey twice.

The Trossachs

In the second week of the October school holidays, the children and I and the dogs had a little holiday. My first holiday in years, ok nowhere exotic and not that far away, but enjoyable none the less. My far flung travel plans, if I'm still capable will have to wait a while. We stayed in a cabin in the woods just north of Callandar. I was slightly concerned that the children may not enjoy my perfect idyll but they did and we would all return. We were very fortunate with the weather and we filled our days with excursions marvelling at the wondrous Trossachs scenery and generally enjoying ourselves. The dogs enjoyed it as well. As I mentioned in a previous post Drummond Castle gardens were used in Outlander. The bottom picture is of Doune Castle also used in Outlander. I did a massive binge of all two Outlander series and have to say after struggling to get through Episode 1, I really enjoyed it.