A Castle and An Abbey

Aberdour Castle

Dunfermline Abbey

Our only day trip during the Christmas holidays in Scotland was to visit a castle, a town and an abbey.

Aberdour Castle is situated in unsurprisingly in Aberdour, Fife, it is now a ruin but still very impressive to see and well worth a visit. It is one of the two oldest datable standing castles, the other being Castle Sween in Argyll. It was built in the 1100s and in later years more parts of the castle were built. It has a lovely walled garden, a doocot, (which is a structure to house doves and pigeons) and next door is St Fillans Church, which is a fine example of Norman architecture from 1100s.

It is part of Historic Scotland which means it is open all year round.

Next we visited Culross and then we carried on to visit Dunfermline Abbey and Palace which are the remains of a great Benedictine Abbey founded by Queen Margaret. In 1070 Queen Margaret founded a priory in Dunfermline, then her son David I turned it to an abbey in 1128. In the abbey Robert the Bruce was buried here in 1329 (minus his heart) plus seven other Scottish monarchs. Charles I was born here and he was the last monarch to be born in Scotland.

It is an very impressive place and inside the abbey the stain glass windows are amazing. There is part of the abbey you have to pay to visit, this we did not do.

All in all a lovely day out visiting Scotland`s historical past!

Alessio and I returned earlier today from our long weekend in Riga and we had a lovely time. It is such a beautiful city and worth a visit!