Highland Trip, Day Two, Fort George and Elgin

That stupid baby started crying at about six in the morning. Somehow, Amy convinced me to go to him, a rare event. I wandered down the hall and scolded him for being up so early telling him I was to get him a bottle and he was to return to slumber. I walked out into the kitchen of the cottage and was making a bottle when I looked out the sliding glass doors to this scene!


So the baby was forgiven (mostly because of the above scene and the fact that he went back to sleep) and we were able to sleep for another fifty minutes or so. Then, we all got up, breakfasted, Amy packed a lunch, and we got in the van headed for Fort George. Fort George is an old military installation, which still houses the 3rd Scots, an infantry battalion. The drive was lovely and the arrival uneventful.

We gaily raised our hands when walking into the fort as an attendant asked if anyone was members. Even she knew this was a bit much and said, “Oh wow, we’re raising our hands!” If the girls were three years older they would have died from their embarrassing parents’ hand raising. We got inside the fort just in time for the grand entrance. There were re-enactors for the Romans through modern times. That was all well and good, but not overly amazing. What was very cool was the fort itself, the arrival of the Golden Lions (UK Military Parachute Team), their complete lack of reserve in letting you handle weapons, and a ridiculous bombing/strafing raid demonstration by a Spitfire.



Here are a few photos for you to get an idea of the fort. It was used to protect the strategic city of Inverness and the north of Scotland.



When I lifted this guy up to see over the wall, he said, “Awesome, a beach!”


There was an interesting ease with which the two boys approached and handled the weapons. They were never afraid of them, needed no instruction (well, “Don’t drop the sniper rifle” but…), and were only hampered by their lack of size (both from an inability to fit to the weapon and from other bigger boys “caring to a have a go").

You’ll notice that only one daughter has pictures here with weapons. That is not surprising to anyone who knows the younger of the two at all. She wanted absolutely nothing to do with touching them, but she did climb around in the vehicles.

Spotting and getting effects on target (MPMG, UK equivalent to the M60)



Manning the comms



GET DOWN ON THE GROUND YOU ... ...



Hell hath no fury like a woman with an RPG. (This was confiscated in Iraq.)



Three days in, the sniper continues to wait patiently for the right target, the right shot.



The British Kevlar looks this stupid on them too. They told me they were getting new ones. This looks exactly the same as putting a US Kevlar on backward.



Damn, Dad, we got branched Transpo!



I was waiting for a young girl to emerge from the water closet when I heard a big roar. It dawned on me that this must be a plane and then suddenly, like out of every WWII movie you have ever seen, between the buildings of the barracks came the Spitfire. It couldn’t have cleared the rooftops by fifty feet. It was surreal, eery, unsettling, and totally awesome. I am certain that the civilians of European cities witnessed this exact thing but with far more terror and destruction. The spitfire flew around demonstrating all sorts of attacking and defensive maneuvers for about fifteen minutes. It was easily the most impressive thing I have ever seen in the air. (Okay, actually it is tied with the time I called in close air support from Apaches in a training exercise and watched them annihilate the target we were painting with our GVLLD.)

After the Spitfire demonstration of which I took no pictures as my jaw was hanging open, we headed to the car where we waited for the second and final jump of the parachute team. It sure was cool and the kids thought it was almost as awesome as I did. The best part was in the afternoon jump, the last guy to jump had a smoke canister burning off his bott as often is the case. But, this time, he decided to dive straight down for as fast and as long as possible, pulling his chute very late. It was pretty cool, the others had their canopies over their heads well before he pulled his chute and he was at least 80% of the way to the ground from their canopies. I tried to sound cool and reminded the kids that I had jumped before to which the eldest queried, “Like that?” “Well, no, Honey, … not like that.”

From there we headed to Elgin and the Spynie Palace ruins. This was a great introduction to ruins in Scotland. The reason is that we had never seen one before. This was incredibly impressive with a tower you could still climb and amazing views. We just didn’t know that was not nearly as amazing the ruins to come.





After those Ruins, we headed into Elgin to the Cathedral ruins. The gates were closed but the ruins clearly present.




We then drove back to the cottage for dinner and a whisky tasting. I’ll write about that next.