Stirling; Saturday, 07 June, 2014

I had a late breakfast and after checking out wandered over to Queen Street station to pick up the train up to Stirling.

I walked from the station over to the hotel just to see if I could checkin (even though it was long before checkin was supposed to open). The room I was booked into was just being cleaned so they looked after my bag for a little while whilst I popped next door to the Beefeater restaurant to have a rather bigger lunch than I was originally planning on having.

Stuffed I waddled back round to the hotel, checked in, and then headed back into town.

I headed over to the bus station to pick up the bus round to a place that’s now a suburb of Stirling, but 700 years ago was empty land, land on which one of the most important battles is Scottish history was fought.

Bannockburn is the battle that all Scots remember – 24th June 1314. Having chosen to visit on the 7th June 2014 just days before the 700th anniversary, it wasn’t surprising that there was quite a bit of a show on.

I had a long look round the visitors centre before heading out to the battlefield monument.

Unfortunately, at the same time as I was heading out to the monument the weather, which had been fine up to then, decided to deteriorate quite quickly and in the time it took look briefly look round the monument I got pretty well drenched.

I, soggily, caught the bus back into town, which thankfully had its heating set to furnace, so by the time I arrived back in the centre of Stirling I was only slightly damp.

I had a brief wander round the city centre before heading back to the hotel to change into clothing that hadn’t been rained on and then blast dried by a buses heating system.

The hotel itself was pretty new having only recently opened in a new leisure park area on the site of a former barracks, so along with the hotel and the Beefeater restaurant there were a couple of other restaurants as well as a cinema, so with the weather still being particularly poor I grabbed dinner in another of the nearby restaurants and spent the evening watching a film.