Travel

Some people asked what the picture from the last post was from.  We got the kids out of the house one Saturday while we were borrowing a car for a couple of weeks.  Ken had heard of an annual event down the road called the Soldiers of Killiecrankie.  It commemorates the Battle of Killiecrankie that happened on July 27, 1689.  It was a nice to do a touristy thing after mostly just working on getting settled in and was a fun way to teach the kids some of the history of where we live now.

The event reminded us a bit of a renaissance fair.  There were battle reenactments, a tour of the battlefield, a living history camp, a jester, and story-teller, etc. It wasn’t very big which was excellent for us with younger children.  It was just enough for us to fill a few hours of the day but not wear us out.

 It lasted for two days and at night they had a ceilidh.  It’s pronounced “cailey” and is a traditional dance where they do different square dances with someone calling out the moves and a band playing along.  We didn’t come back for that but look forward to showing the kids a ceilidh at some point.

On the website it said that everyone pays to get in but when we got there they just charged Ken and I which was nice.  It was all set up in the field and so when it rained a few times we got a bit wet but thankfully it wasn’t too bad and Ken did end up running home to grab our umbrellas that we forgot which helped as well.

We started out by watching the soldiers and horses demonstrate a bit of how they fought.  There was also a group that fired a cannon a few times which made all the kids jump.  Poor little William’s eyes got so big each time.

We also watched a slap stick show for the kids and then were front and center to see and hear all about how they punished and tortured people.  Thankfully by that time the kids were eating some meat pies and not paying too close attention to what was being explained because it was pretty gruesome.  I definitely thought that if I had been tortured like the ways they described I would have admitted to being a witch in no time.

The jester was making balloon swords and giving them out which was nice.  William’s started to deflate mid way through but he handled it ok.  They did end up all picking out some swords and a couple of shields to take home.  Since we sold so many of their toys we had told them that when we got here they could pick out some new ones.  So that was what they wanted.  They sold cheaper, home-made ones but these are made (the wooden ones the big kids are holding in the top picture) really nicely and apparently are a scaled down version of the real thing.  They can totally reenact Braveheart now. William preferred a cheap plastic one with a sheath.

They also had a tent where you could be dressed in highland clothing.  At first it was just going to be Ken and Josiah since Audrey got shy and didn’t want to do it and I was wrangling William.  But then we got her to change her mind and then the women doing the dressing said I should as well. We didn’t do William but he is little and showed no interest anyway.

William was happy to chew on grass while we got dressed (love those shoes in the background).

They also had face painting.

I laughed when I saw the archery targets.  This cost extra money to do so we didn’t do it.

Here are our final looks.

We had a great time and would recommend it to others.  I think probably a lot of the people working it are volunteers or at least do things like this as a side job but they were all very nice and did their best to make it a fun time.