My post will be a slight bit shorter. I didn’t go to the highlands as I was feeling unwell. I will try to draw out the Aberdeenshire tour as long as I can, though.
For me, I thought that the Aberdeenshire tour was fabulous despite the fact I was a little grumpy after my shoes got soaked through and I fell in a small stream. I really enjoyed seeing the historical gravesites, the Abbey and the stone circle. I really felt a connection with the stone circle and I really did like being there although it was very very wet.
I think the rain overshadowed a lot of my thoughts about the tour. I was ill prepared for the cold wet grasslands. It was gorgeous though. I did love the small streams, and how thick the grass was and the different areas that we went to.
Dunnotter castle was my favorite on the stop, although I ended up having a bit of a panic attack once we got to go BACK up those stairs. I am really frightened of heights, so uh… climbs like that both A make me dizzy and B, scare me. Overall, though I felt it to be a breathtaking experience, and it was cool we got to explore a very ancient castle that had been standing for a very long period of time. Despite the fact that I got soaked, I had a blast. I think what surprised me was that a lot of the sites we visited on the tour were made out of sandstone. It was partially why everything was so slippery, but I found that to be a very cool tidbit of information. Another thing that I felt was cool was that a castle was almost like a whole community in itself. It was that big.
the Abbey was another of my favorite sites. Now that one I did get some photographs of. Unfortunately, they’re all files that cannot be displayed on webpages (thank you IPHONE), So I will convert them later and add them in. I really loved the architecture of this abbey. I felt it was very advanced for it’s time, and it was cool how you could see how the abbey would of looked if it were still standing as a complete building. I also loved the greenery and gardens around it. I wish we could have stayed a little longer, and that we could have actually gone inside.
The stone circle was very interesting to me. I didn’t know much about them going in besides the fact they were used for rituals and astrological readings. I felt it was cool that our guide said she was personally connected to the stone circle and she believed she was meant to be its guardian. I don’t know much about Scottish spirituality and believes, so that’s why I found that part of the tour very unique. I know my friend who I talk to frequently warned me of Whisps that take you on journeys. I wonder if it was something similar to that.
The last site I will explore is the graveyard. I really liked that site. reading all the tombstones and all of the history behind them was very intriguing to me. I was also surprised my professor had a connection to the site. I thought that was super cool.
Works Cited:
Cromar, William, “narrativeArtsTours” newMedia Wiki. 2022. http://newmediawiki.pbworks.com/w/page/149510490/narrativeArtsTours Accessed December 1st, 2022.