That somewhere else we fancied visiting was not actually Stirling but that’s where we started the day’s Princess Cruises excursion after a nice drive through some of the Scottish countryside.

Our bus stopped at the bottom of a hill where those of us aboard were given an amount of time to spend in the city. One option was to stick to the flat ground and head into the city for, most probably knowing most cruisers, a coffee. The other option was to head up the not-too-steep-but-steep-enough hill to Stirling Castle. That, as you’ve doubtlessly guessed, is what we opted to do. This visit wasn’t included as part of the tour so you’d need to factor in the time to reach the castle, time there, and cost of entry to see whether it’s worth it, but for us it was a chance to visit a castle and we do like to visit castles while we are absolutely indifferent to visiting coffee shops.

We were dropped off close to the Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman statue. Not only was Campbell-Bannerman a prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1905 to 1908 but he was also technically the first prime minister, the title not existing prior to his tenure. He also shares a birthday with me. Not the year, of course, because scientists would likely be checking out my extreme longevity if that were the case.

The walk was just strenuous enough for us to have a few pauses – we’re not the most mobile of people but we keep persisting just to punish our bodies – and there were some interesting buildings on display along the street’s ascent that made photo breaks a useful excuse. We particularly liked the Stirling Boys Club, built in 1929 and sporting the interesting mottos on its exterior wall of “Keep Smiling”, “Play The Game”, and “Quarrelling Is Taboo”.

We reached the top, paid to enter Stirling Castle, and set about wandering around with the limited time available. One of the first sights we saw from this high vantage point over the city was the distant Wallace Monument, something that had been pointed out on our drive here earlier in the day so we knew what we were looking at. Built in the middle of the nineteenth century and standing nearly seventy metres in height the monument commemorates the life of William Wallace and is probably therefore incredibly disappointing to anyone who’s seen Braveheart and thinks it’s in any way accurate. The clue was that Mel Gibson was involved. Come on.

Stirling Castle acted as both an important strategic defence point and a palace for royalty in Scotland with several kings and queens crowned there, including Mary, Queen of Scots in 1542. Whenever a war or uprising occurred it typically came under siege because of its important location as a downstream crossing over the River Forth.

It was good to see lots of other cruise passengers visiting Stirling Castle, particularly a large contingent of the Red Hat Society who were on the ship with us. They weren’t there as part of our tour and our tour was the only one organised by Princess that hit Stirling so this must have been something they arranged independently.

We largely wandered the battlements and ducked into most of the exterior buildings and, sadly, failed to realise in our time there that we could venture into some of the more impressive rooms. Subsequently, while we enjoyed that we’d visited Stirling Castle we left with a general feeling that it was good, but not great as far as castles go. That’s our fault, so if we’re in the area again we’ll have to make sure to rectify that mistake.

Had we realised that there were rooms to visit then we’d have stayed longer at Stirling Castle but we wrongly decided that we’d seen everything there was to really see – the Great Hall and the views over the Scottish landscape had been very nice – so left to make our way back down the hill and to a pub near to where the bus would be picking us up from (no, not the Wetherspoon’s; never a Wetherspoon’s). We knew we wouldn’t get a great local drink there but we still managed to get something Scottish.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll head to the Falkirk Wheel to take a ride on it, and that was the thing we’d really wanted to do on this excursion.

The Falkirk Wheel is a boat lift connecting the Union Canal with the Forth and Clyde Canal, transferring boats between the two stretches of water using a rotating mechanism that is unique in the world. Not only does it look fabulous but it’s highly efficient, managing to shift a combined weight of 500 tons twenty four metres up and down for about the energy of eight kettles boiling. Physics at work right there!

After a short wait for our slot to come up a large capacity tourist boat came alongside and took all of us on this cruise excursion as well as other groups of visitors for the ride we’d come to try out. Our boat made its way into the lower gondola where a watertight seal was locked into place. Above us a similar thing would have been happening for any transport coming down, all of this managed by a control room. With each gondola containing effectively water to a certain level, some of that displaced by a boat, and Archimedes’ principles of water displacement holding true, each gondola was evenly-balanced regardless of whether it was occupied or not. Physics again! Is there anything it can’t explain!?

As the lift rotates it’s necessary to also rotate the contents of each gondola – water and boat – because otherwise you’d end up upside down at the other end and, generally, that’s considered not desirable. Geared sections keep everything level with the result being that the action of being lifted or lowered is incredibly smooth, incredibly quiet, and you may not even notice you’re moving at all to start with. We certainly didn’t.

At the top we waited for the watertight seal to be unlocked and our boat made its way out along a raised section of canal with some lovely views out across the Scottish landscape. Part of this short trip involved passing through the Roughcastle Tunnel which itself runs beneath the Antonine Wall, a more northerly fortified line built by the Romans but one which has survived less well due to it being constructed from wood and turf rather than stones.

At the end of the tunnel there was a basin area wide enough for our boat to turn around, head back through, then re-enter the Falkirk Wheel at the top for the descent back to the visitor centre.

It wasn’t a long experience, but it was one that you can only do here in Scotland and we are very much into experiential travel, with the rarer ones being the ones we seek out most often. We enjoyed the excursion as a whole even though it involved a fair bit of travelling to get there and back to Greenock and if we were to return to this part of the world on another cruise then we’d like to check out Glasgow next time.

Back aboard Regal Princess for the evening we followed our usual routine of enjoying some drinks on the balcony and admiring the views while it was dry and not too cold. Even under dull grey sky the distant hills and fields had a charm that we imagine a lot of the Americans aboard in particular found delightful.

We’d booked the Crown Grill for dining on this night of the British Isles cruise as it’s something we generally enjoy when we cruise with Princess Cruises. We are somewhat set in our ways with what we pick from the menu and it was all as excellent as it always is. Nobody has beaten Princess for their filet mignon on a cruise ship, yet. That said, with recent price increases we’ve seen (at time of writing this, early 2026) it’s now something we probably won’t be doing every cruise moving forward.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll make our first visit to the Shetland Islands where a very foggy Lerwick and local tour group problems see our plans for the day torn up and thrown away before we even set foot ashore.