Cardoness Castle was an abandoned tower house, originally built in the 15th century, and now cared for as a protected monument. On the day we visited we were the only people there and the only other car in the car park was, we think, the ticketing staff member’s. There was quite a hike up to the top of the tower and we’re not fit people but we’ve never refused a tower climbing challenge yet.

Dundrennan Abbey was a Cistercian abbey, now ruins, though with some well-preserved details. For its part in history it was the place in which Mary, Queen of Scots spent her last night in Scotland in 1568 before she headed to England and was captured.

When we arrived at the abbey we saw a few other cars present and some people heading through the entrance as it had just opened. We approached the entrance and spotted a sign that indicated we should turn left to buy tickets for entry but we were confused as nobody else was. Nevertheless, we obeyed the sign and headed down to a hut, entered, and asked for tickets. The man inside was shocked and remarked that most people ignored the sign and that it was nice to have someone pay for a change. We laughed about it and explored the ruins, noticing that the people who’d not paid were universally older and all Scottish. Some comment about stereotypical tightness might have slipped our lips.

There wasn’t a huge amount to see as the ruins of Threave Castle itself are quite small although its location and views were pretty good even under not the prettiest of skies.

The main thing for us, though, was that Threave Castle was on an island. We’d guessed there would be a bridge to it but we soon discovered it could only be reached by boat. As a fun element to the visit the boatman would only come to ferry you across when you rang a bell so we duly did that before our trip to the castle’s keep. After we’d returned to the mainland and explored the garden areas for a bit we passed the pontoon to get across to the island again and saw a group of people standing there, waiting, looking across the water to the boatman who was simply looking back. They hadn’t realised the bell needed ringing. Luckily for them my wife walked down, struck the bell, and we wandered off as we heard the boat finally start up and head towards the sheepish-looking visitors.

Unlike Threave Castle in the vicinity there was no need to make use of a boatman to get us across to the castle’s interior this time as the moat was fairly narrow and easily crossed by a small bridge. The ruins of the inside of Caerlaverock Castle were not so all-encompassing as to prevent plenty of wandering around, up, and on.

Outside the castle were a few siege weapons. Caerlaverock had been besieged a number of times in its past and reenactments are a regular occurrence at the Scottish castle. I’m always partial to a nice trebuchet although the one we saw was pretty small.

During the days we went exploring the Dumfries and Galloway area, driving around the park, visiting the nearby towns, and taking in some culture afforded by the historical buildings we happened upon: Cardoness Castle, Threave Castle, Caerlaverock Castle, and Dundrennan Abbey. We had no direct plans and just drove where the roads took us or where we noticed signs of interest which also led to us heading down single track roads and finding ourselves with occasionally gorgeous photo opportunities of the Galloway countryside and lakes.

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.

But the night before we were due to arrive at Lerwick we received an email from the local company. Their boat had developed engine trouble so they couldn’t go ahead and were refunding our money. I won’t lie: our first thought was “Huh, I wonder if Princess offered them more to put on another boat for their passengers last-minute and they took the money?” but that’s just because I’m a cynical old swine. Anyway, booked plans scuppered we fell back to deciding we’d just have to take a walk around, knowing that there was an iron age ruin, a castle, some museums, and pubs that would likely more than satisfy us.

We awoke to thick fog around Lerwick. This was such a joy for us. Had the boat not developed a fault then we’d likely have been out on the cold water for several hours with visibility in the tens of metres. Instead, we were greeted by some atmospheric views of the town before we needed to tender ashore.

If the weather is nice then the first people to board a tender boat from a ship like to sit up top (if that’s an option). When it’s cold and damp then this isn’t the case, but there are still two good arguments for getting to the exposed part of the boat: firstly, you get fresh air and views without being shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers on decidedly uncomfortable benches with, if you’re lucky, a misted-up, water-splattered porthole to look out; secondly, you get off the tender boat first when it arrives at its destination. While my wife opted to sit inside for both trips between Lerwick and Regal Princess, I went for the chilly option.

Being first off the tender boat I had time to hang around and snap some shots by the pier at Lerwick until my wife emerged from her shelter. An interesting sculpture caught my eye – they often do – and this turned out to be the Diana Fountain. No, thankfully, not a memorial to the late princess, but rather one erected in 1890 for the whaling ship Diana which became trapped in Arctic ice for six months in 1866 leading to many deaths. The original water fountain was replaced by the overflowing metal chalice sculpture in 2000 by local artist Alan Hart.

Another sculpture stood out as we started to head off to where we first wanted to explore. This was Da Lightsome Buoy by Jo Chapman, a fairly new and fairly humorous piece of art near the water. If you visit then take a minute or two to read the various inscriptions on it out loud.

You can get a better feel for the fog levels in Lerwick during our visit there with this look back across the water to Regal Princess. Once again, some serendipity that our boat trip had been cancelled.

The first place we wanted to visit in Lerwick was the iron age ruins on the shore of Clickimin Loch, only about one and a half kilometres from the port area. This started out with a little more uphill-traipsing than we’d expected and neither of us are exactly fit.

We reached a convenient pausing point. Taking photos is a great way to force a rest on the pair of us when we’re out and about, especially for my wife whose old leg-related injuries can cause her some grief that she tries too hard to power through sometimes. This was St Columba’s Church of Scotland, a typically neoclassical piece of architecture dating from the early to mid nineteenth century. It is the largest church building in Shetland and its 1871 organ was only the second one to be installed in a Church of Scotland building following the end of a rule prohibiting them.

As the door appeared to be open we popped our heads inside and were greeted by the minister or a helper who ushered us in, had a bit of a chat with us, offered to get us some drinks (probably due to how flushed we looked from the steep walk in the chilly air), and was just generally really lovely. We’re not religious but it seemed to be a very welcoming place.

Suitably recovered we headed on our way, now hugging the coastline in a westerly direction. The views were moody and the going was far more level now making for a far more pleasant stroll. This coastline is known as Da Sletts.

One final piece of functional artwork to spot before we made our way inland towards the loch were the shelters installed by NHS Scotland using brightly-coloured upright boat hulls. These were erected in 2023 to be used by the nearby staff and patients of the Lerwick health centre as well as tourists walking the path. And we did, even though it wasn’t raining, just because we could.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll take a look around the impressive Broch of Clickimin.

This post will mostly just be photographs of the Broch of Clickimin since our experience – and that of most people visiting it – can be broadly summarised as we walked to it, we walked around it, and we walked inside it.

To start with, though, “What is a broch?” might be what you’re wondering because I know I was. There’s actually no consensus on this. Early archaeological thoughts had them as defensive locations but later ones questioned the lack-of-strategic positioning; other thoughts were that they were status symbols for wealthy or important people but the high number of them in this part of the world for the time period brought that into question; there are those who think they were centralised farmsteads; nobody really knows, in other words.

The site of the Broch of Clickimin is also contentious with early declarations of a late Bronze Age settlement superseded by an Iron Age farmhouse then later defensive additions now being questioned following more modern archaeological interpretations. Sometimes science disappoints you.

Anyway, enough of the background to the place; on with the photos. You can see from them that the fog was still with us, still smothering a lot of the surroundings and dropping that temperature right down. In this first picture you can see the walk from the main road entrance to the ruins.

A narrow, low entry tunnel granted access to the interior of the Broch of Clickimin although this did involve squatting, checking to make sure nobody else was coming your way, then shuffling through. If you’ve got poor mobility then this is likely to be something you won’t be able to do although a sled, some rope, and friends to drag you along is obviously an option to consider. Accessibility wasn’t a big concern during the Iron Age for some reason.

We weren’t at the Broch of Clickimin long because it’s not a large site but it was very interesting and well worth looking around if you can. In the next post in this British Isles cruise travelogue series we’ll conclude our time ashore with more of a walk around Lerwick including visits to the museum, fort, and a couple of pubs.