Blair Castle & The Tomb of BONNIE DUNDEE

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:10]Heat up here.

[00:00:34]Heat.

[00:00:53]Heat.

[00:01:21]Well, I think it was just a little bit too early there because a couple of seconds after I sneaked in. They opened the big gates.

[00:01:32]I've got this huge avenue with birds twittering.

[00:01:40]Give a Twitter for the camera.

[00:01:48]No.

[00:01:51]And of course, this is the world famous Nobly Tree Avenue where all the trees are knobbly. Nobles in abundance as far as I can see.

[00:02:18]Look, Blair Castle.

[00:02:24]Not going to go into the castle, but I have paid a a small admittance fee for the the grounds. And there's a lot to see here. £11 and worth every perry.

[00:02:35]It'll mean it's not just the ruins of uh St. Bride's Kirk and the tomb of Bonnie Dundee, the walk through the woodland.

[00:02:44]There's a lot of other stuff. walled garden, what have you. Yeah, I mean you could spend half a day, a whole day even here.

[00:02:55]What a stunning castle.

[00:03:12]Heat. Heat.

[00:03:49]Heat up here.

[00:04:29]Woohoo!

[00:04:32]Woohoo!

[00:04:49]Well, this is really quite beautiful.

[00:04:54]Sometimes when you've got plans for a day and you want to do this and you want to do that and it's very easy to kind of rush about to fulfill all these plans and it's sometimes good just to stop and relax.

[00:05:18]And this is a very good place to do just that.

[00:05:23]in the walled garden here.

[00:05:27]I think uh the ruins of uh St. Bride's Circus are that way. Not too sure.

[00:05:35]You get a little map when you buy your ticket, but I've stuck at my rock sack, but I think it is sort of that way. Then we'll just kind of saunter once we've seen the the tomb of Bonnie Dundee.

[00:05:50]will saunter towards the falls of Brewer.

[00:05:56]I'm now in that kind of frame of mind where I feel as if there is no rush.

[00:06:01]Does it really matter if I don't catch a certain bus?

[00:06:06]What the heck? The sun's out. It's beautiful.

[00:06:11]Time to chill out.

[00:08:45]Well, I've made it to the ruins of St. bride's kirk.

[00:08:50]And there's a lot of really old stuff going on here. The kirk itself clearly gets a good bit of age to it. But lying in the ground there is what looks like a cup marked stone, which may or may not go back as far as prehistoric times, unless it's more recent than that.

[00:09:15]And beneath my feet lies the remains of John Graeme of Clabber House, Bonnie Dundee, a great warrior of the late 17th century.

[00:09:43]He fought in many battles in his fairly short life. From what I understand, I think at one point when he was fighting somewhere else in Europe, he somehow saved the life of King William of Orange.

[00:10:03]something that he may, I would imagine, later have regretted because he was very much in the side of the Stewarts and led the first Jacobite rising.

[00:10:21]1689 I think is when it was towards the 1690s perhaps.

[00:10:30]and he was very much at the front at the the battle of Kelly Cranke.

[00:10:40]That's a battle that saw about uh 2,000 Jacobites beat a government army of twice that number, four or 5,000.

[00:10:52]And at one point during that battle, Bor Dundee had his arm raised a loft. I would imagine on horseback leading a charge against perhaps the fleeing enemy, sword in hand, and he gets shot in his armpit.

[00:11:15]just above the armor line. You know, late 17th century, they were still wearing armor. Perhaps just breast plates, maybe helms as well, but that was a lucky musk ball for whichever government soldier fired it just above his armor and his armpit and he died on the battlefield. Bonnie Dundee.

[00:11:44]That iron breastplate is in Blair Castle. I would imagine it's on display. I'm not sure, but I would guess that that's probably the case. And it has a bullet hole in it or a hole caused by a musk ball which is a bit strange because the uh musk ball that killed Bonnie Dundee went over the top of his armor into his armpit didn't actually hit. If it had hit his breast plate, it might have lived.

[00:12:17]But I was, you know, sometimes when I'm doing these kind of walking videos, I don't do a great deal of research.

[00:12:22]should come maybe scan the internet for maybe some interesting snippets. And I'm sure I've read last night that um the hole in his armor, his breastplate was put in afterwards after his death at some point to somehow make the story a we bit more interesting, give more of a an appeal to the the uh to his breastplate when it was on display, which is a little bit weird to be honest. You know why on earth would you do that?

[00:13:18]Heat.

[00:13:34]Heat.

[00:14:04]I just thought I'd sit in the steps here and have my pie.

[00:14:08]This is an access point to the church.

[00:14:12]Probably in everybody's way.

[00:14:15]But that's what us old folks do. We just don't care that much.

[00:14:23]I bet I put a hat on before I get burned alive. It's lovely and warm.

[00:14:31]Not sure how I'm going to find my way from here towards the falls of Brewer.

[00:14:37]Paths aren't that clear on my map.

[00:14:43]We'll see.

[00:14:50]Not really been that much rain in the last few days, so I can't imagine there'll be much water falling.

[00:15:05]I'll keep this brief because the batter is probably less than 50%.

[00:15:17]Nothing worse than a battery less than 50%.

[00:15:26]Okay. So, so for those of you who almost had heart failure at the last video because I wasn't eating a pie, I've got a pie. All right.

[00:15:39]See, pie.

[00:15:57]pie and not a great deal of teeth to eat it with. I'll just suck my way through this pie.

[00:16:29]It's 12:00. Plenty of time.

[00:16:44]I was at the Paisley Food and Drink Festival a few days ago.

[00:16:51]Pretty good event. It's pretty big. lots of food, purveyors and drink purveyors.

[00:17:02]And I kind of I set up camp as it were in the camera tent cuz I I missed the camera beer festivals they used to have in the town hall in Paisley, but I can understand why they maybe don't have them there anymore. I think they recently renovated the town hall. told me we don't want the smell of beer or big heavy barrels getting trundled about the place. I don't know. So, it was in a tent.

[00:17:32]But, you know, I I don't enjoy beer festivals as much as I used to.

[00:17:39]And I think it's a combination of both my age and the state of beer these days.

[00:17:47]I I used to and I used to go to beer festivals decades ago and even down to the great British beer festival in in London and you would always come away well you'd always come away slightly inebriated but you would always come away with at least one or two beers in your mind that you thought wow that was really good these days I don't get that I I in the last couple of years I've come away from beer festivals just feeling disappointed feeling that I've not tasted any beer. I haven't tasted any one beer that I've actually liked which is a bit weird, you know.

[00:18:45]I mean, I said to one guy in the tent, it's hard to know where to go for a beer. To which she replied very loudly, there pointing towards the the long uh counter in the camera beer tent, but that wasn't really what I meant.

[00:19:07]For example, I asked sometimes with these beer festivals, there's a certain knowledge amongst the staff as to what the good beers are. And I asked one guy and he pointed me in the direction of a beer at the end bottom end. So I went along had a pint and it smelt of peaches and it tasted pretty much of peaches.

[00:19:31]Didn't taste like beer.

[00:19:35]I I don't want beer that tastes of peaches or of grapefruit or of cherries or beer that's sour.

[00:19:44]I I just want beer beer where there's malt and hops involved and these ingredients come across and the way it tastes and the way it smells and I don't know I I find that difficult to to find these days. I think that's what the problem is.

[00:20:04]Beer has changed. so much in the last decade or two per kids are drinking stuff like beer that tastes of peaches. My god, my age is coming into a wee bit as well.

[00:20:20]You know, there's no longer that wonder and excitement. It's just a kind of going through the motions sort of thing, you know.

[00:20:32]Anyway, I'll go through the motions and eat this pie and then we'll figure out how to get from here some bride's kirk on a path that'll take me in the direction of the falls of Brewer where we'll end.

[00:20:50]I don't know if you can hear that.

[00:20:51]There's a piper in the background.

[00:21:00]I'll be the last lament for oldfashioned beer.

[00:21:20]Heat.

[00:21:29]Heat.

[00:22:18]Heat.

[00:22:38]Heat.

[00:23:01]Heat. Heat.

[00:23:19]I'm not sure that I really want to lean against this stone wall cuz it doesn't look too sound.

[00:23:28]Saw a lizard coming down the path there.

[00:23:33]First lizard I've seen in probably a few years.

[00:23:38]We don't get lizards in partic.

[00:23:48]So here we have a bridge over the falls of Brewer.

[00:23:53]A lot of falls. There's a number of them. There's there's I think possibly the most spectacular falls is further up the Glenn there.

[00:24:03]Some Americans asked me if this was the way. I don't know. I didn't go to the one at the top.

[00:24:09]This is the low fs.

[00:24:12]That'll be the high falls, I suppose.

[00:24:18]Don't sing, Ed.

[00:24:21]So, I think we'll call it a day there.

[00:24:23]Just head downhill towards Brewer.

[00:24:26]There's a bus stop, the car park. Bus sometime after 4.

[00:24:32]I don't think there's any place to have a beer down there.

[00:24:36]So, you've had a pie and I'm afraid it looks as if there probably not going to be a beer.

[00:24:43]I think it's just the way it is or it is what it is.

[00:24:48]We can all survive without beer. I think I'm Eddie Burns.

[00:24:55]Take care.

[00:25:12]Heat. Heat.

[00:25:23]Heat.

[00:25:42]Heat.

[00:25:48]Heat. Heat.