History, graveyards, and a Nobel Laureate

Look, a blog that doesn't have to start with a certain letter - I'm feeling a little bit lost (only a very little bit). We had a lovely day out at the weekend exploring a bit more of the area we're now living in. Our first stop was Cawdor which is a very cute little town and it has a fabulous graveyard, which was wonderful to wander around. It also has a castle, but that will be for another day.

I love how stonemasons in the past used to carve the words on and just split them at the end of the line rather than try and fit them evenly. If you read the headstone below you'll see that the name Grace has been split over two lines, as has the word shoemaker.

This is a great stone tablet with lots of interesting death symbology.

Nature reclaiming the graves.

I loved this tree - I could just imagine children sitting in the branches when it was smaller, playing in the graveyard (yes, I know I'm crazy).

This is the column near the front door of the church, with manacle still attached - it seemed too big for a wrist so I'm thinking they used to put it around peoples necks.

This is the grave of Surgeon Neil Smith who was assistant surgeon on the HMS Victory when Admiral Lord Nelson was fatally wounded, and he also helped prepare Nelson's body for his funeral cortege.

Cute little black dog who was out enjoying the sun.

 Nice cottages.

These trees and flowers were by the river - I loved the first tree as it's really bent up and covered with moss.

Beautiful spring daffodils all down the side of the road through the village.

We walked back through the graveyard to get to the car and came across this headstone for a family that had some very bad luck.  Two of the sons died by drowning, one in the St Lawrence river New York, and one in Melbourne, Australia.

As we were driving along we came across this very quirky place - they have a gargoyle in one of their trees and all along the fence and in the front garden they have boots of different colours and sizes.

Our next stop was at Ardclach Bell Tower which was built in 1655 - that's a very, very, very long time ago.  It was amazing to walk inside and touch the stones that have been touched by people so many years ago. It's in a beautiful spot way out in the countryside and has a lot of steps to get up to it - I think we'll definitely be going back to have a picnic there as the view was amazing.

Here's a shot of the view from outside the tower - as you can see, there appears to be a graveyard down by the river.  How fabulous.

In the lovely little graveyard by the river that we could see from the tower we discovered James Whyte Black who was a Nobel Laureate. Of course when we got home I was straight onto google to discover what new drugs James had developed in order to deserve a Nobel prize. Spookily, I found that one of the drugs he invented is Propranolol, which is mainly a blood pressure medication, but it is one that I take as it is also really good at preventing migraines, so next time we go to this area I just might have to take him a bunch of flowers.

Our last stop was at Dulsie Bridge which was built across the river Findhorn in 1755 and is still perfectly fine.  On one of the signs it tells about a great flood in 1829 known as the Muckle Spate, which knocked down most bridges but this one survived.

The view from the bridge is amazing - beautiful landscape.

After a wonderful day out exploring history we of course stopped for a break but we were very boring and had a proper lunch for a change - no cake today.

Until next time, be good, stay safe, and keep a look out for any unusual history in your area.

Pamela & Ken
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