Originally, we had planned the whole of today to ride the Jacobite Steam Train from Fort William to Mallaig, stopping in Glenfinnan to see the Highlander Memorial and cross the Glenfinnan Viaduct, as seen in the Harry Potter movies. However, that didn’t pan out, as when we got there, the steam train was full. This was too bad, as we had really been looking forward to that trip. However, an idea struck me.
While we were looking at Castle Stalker, we browsed the gift shop there. In that shop, there was a book entitled Castles. Now, when I see books about Scotland, I always check the index to see if the Dows or the Buchanans are mentioned. The Buchanans are sometimes in there, but the Dows never are…until this book.
In the Castles book, I found that there was a castle built in Scotland called Arnhall Castle in the early 1600′s and it was sold a couple hundred years ago. However, before it was sold, it was held by the Dow family. What’s more, a scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail was filmed there. (The scene with the Famous Historian, where he is murdered by a knight.) We knew we HAD to visit this castle. The sad thing was that it was near Stirling (which is somewhat in keeping with the link to the Buchanans, since the Buchanan lands are very near Stirling), and we’d already been to Stirling. However, having nothing to do since the train plans were off, we decided to head back to Stirling from Fort William. This was to be a 2.5 hour drive one way, but worth it, as I knew I’d kick myself if I didn’t visit the ruins of an actual Dow castle while I was here.
It turned out to be a VERY good thing that we had the GPS. While it called much of what we traveled “Unnamed Roads”, it would have been impossible to find the castle otherwise. We did some quick Internet searches before leaving our B&B, and all we had in terms of directions to Arnhall Castle was the latitude and longitude coordinates. I input those into our GPS, and Kate quickly plotted us a route. (TomTom names their voices, and the voice we are using is named Kate.) Even with the GPS, there was some confusion as we ended up pretty deep into Keir lands, which is who I think the Dows sold the castle to, eventually.
We ended up at a particular house on the Keir Estate, which said “Drive Slowly”, so we figured they didn’t mind us driving there. However, we approached the estate, and realized that it might be considered bad form if we were to tramp about on their lands without permission, so we knocked on the door. An elderly lady came around the side of the house, looking somewhat startled to see two younger people with American accents asking if they could look at the dumpy ruins of what used to be their family’s castle. However, she gave us some vague directions about it being in the middle of a cow pasture on the right up the road a bit. We took that to be permission and set off.
We turned Kate off, as she appeared to have lost GPS signal, which means she would be of no use to us whatsoever. We began walking, somewhat uphill. We passed a single cow pasture on the right, but there was nothing in it but cows. We saw some ruined walls on the left, but that was a sheep pasture, so we didn’t figure it was that. We walked and walked, until we came to what appeared to be a gate. However, it looked somewhat newish in the center, so we figured we’d probably reached the end of our walk, but we still hadn’t seen the ruins and were starting to get a little bummed about the whole enterprise. We walked around in the forest a little, when Kim saw a small building, but it had glass windows, which wouldn’t have been common in 1617, when the castle was built. And our searches said the place would be in ruins. So we decided to head back. On a whim, I took out Kate and turned her back on. To my delight, she grabbed signal rather quickly, and began giving out directions in her familiar, clipped, British accent. We realized, according to the latitude and longitude coordinates we had given her, that we’d passed the site of Arnhall Castle, so we headed back along the path. When we got to the walls that didn’t appear to be anything special, Kate informed us that we had reached our destination. I was on the Dow ancestral lands.
The castle was indeed in ruins, and there were sheep everywhere around it, but that didn’t stop me from feeling very happy that we had found it, something that few tourists see, and something of my family’s history in Scotland.
Mind you, I don’t know when my branch of the family left Scotland for England, and eventually to the States. It’s likely, and possible, that they left before Arnhall Castle was built. However, the Dow family is all related somehow, and while we were a lowland family, family is important to a Scot, no matter how distant. It’s likely that if the Dow clan of which I am a part had visited the castle when it was still held by the Dows, we would have been welcomed warmly and treated to a wee dram by our distant cousins. In that way, coming to the castle felt good to me. It was something I never expected to experience, even in the Drymen area, and I’m glad we made the drive all the way back to the Stirling area.
