Good afternoon youtube and welcome back to the channel. Today I'm headed to a place in
Dumfries and Galloway called Drumlanrig Castle now it's a spectacular building but that's not
the only reason I'm going to go there. On the grounds of that estate there's actually an old
roman fort. I Figured I would start up here because drumlanrig is down to the left here
it's about 10 miles south so I'll ride down and have a look. Look at this! I came up here because
well I've never been up here before but it also gives a great vantage point of the Nith valley.
There's a lot of ice here actually you might not be able to see it very well but
yeah maybe you can.
It's stunning here anyway let's go.
The temperature here now I don't have my gloves on but the temperature here in Scotland will barely
rise above freezing now between now and sort of February. A little donkey a little pony as well
there seems to be a lot of horses here there must be like stables and stuff
around I don't mean in this field I mean here in general in Sanquar itself. Look at this!
This is why on these single track roads you need to be careful particularly folks when
maybe there's an oncoming vehicle because the last thing you want to be doing is aquaplaning
on that ice if you're moving over for a car that's coming in your direction
it'll be a disaster. In fact I'm gonna skip across
it doesn't matter how good your tread is it won't hold up well against ice. Clark's little arc! This
is obviously one of these little petting zoos for families that's quite a nice idea, see a
little pony on the hill there that's more of them there. There's some sheep and pigs on the picture,
anyway before we go any further I'm going to put my gloves on because I must say it's frozen
or I'm frozen. If you watched the last video you'll have seen this building here, Toll booth
and here on the left hand side just beyond the lights is the oldest post office in the world.
Incredible established in 1712.
Right then let's go. Look at this!
Beautiful golden hour, it's gonna be dark in less than an hour that's all right plenty of time.
This is dalpedder hill, in the last video I talked about the young lady who was abducted
by the Crichton's at Sanquhar castle there, she would have come from here
it's only about a mile and a half. Over on the right hand side here guys this is the river nith.
We'll get there before the sun sets that's good.
all right
Drumlanrig castle.
So folks you're welcome to come to these country estates there's not a problem riding in here,
let's have a look at this so this is the Nith you see she's quite a substantial river
this flows all the way from Dumfries up to right through New Cumnock actually and beyond up into
Southern Ayrshire. That's as I said earlier the reason I'm at Drumlanrig I want to look at
Drumlanrig itself because it's quite spectacular but there's also a roman fort here and an older..
sorry a medieval castle as well so we'll have a look at some of that. I'll talk about why they
were here why this was so strategically important. Look at this valley it's stunning let's slow down
scaring sheep incredible views all around of the nith valley and the hills on either side.
Drumlanrig
Look at the size of this place folks it's absolutely vast it's huge this castle here
was built between 1679 and 1689 so it took about 10 years to build yeah. Now
whilst it was being built the family was staying over at Sanquhar Castle I went there
on my last video yeah if you want to have a look at that you can see after this, now
the lord who built this William Douglas believe it or not spent one night here after they built
it decided he didn't like it so he moved back to that old ruin, obviously it wasn't a ruin
then. Under ordinary circumstances you can come here and go inside and do tours etc. It's a vast
estate you can come here and you walk around to your heart's content there's a little kiddies
play park and stuff here as well. In this building there are Rembrandts and Da Vinci's I think the
Da Vinci's valued somewhere in the region of 150 million pounds quite an incredible sum of money.
This building here has got 120 rooms you see these turrets there's 17 of those in this building here
and everything we see around here are the old stable blocks and stable buildings. I'm
going to ride down here but I want to just show you this. You see the gardens here at the back
now there's a little children's play park there just beyond that is a roman fort that
dates back to Antonine times. I'm going go and have a look at that now and beyond that again
there's Tibbers Castle yeah which is a medieval castle, built around the 12th century. Okay so
what other interesting facts can I tell you about Drumlanrig before we go and see this
roman fort or the site of the Roman Fort. Well the sycamore trees here are over 300 years old
they're called the Drumlanrig sycamores and they're actually the largest in Britain.
It's amazing what money can buy it's said that the Duke of Buccleuch is the largest
landowner in the British isles yeah he's a Peer. Now I read somewhere that he's worth somewhere in
the region of 213 million, I believe the artwork and this building's worth more than that alone.
213 million? yeah peanuts that man's a billionaire.
Let's head down the hill
Beautiful huh I want to go over here actually
See if we can park somewhere this will do nicely
As you can see Drumlanrig behind us here. The reason the romans were in this part of Scotland
at that time we're talking about 142 ad to about 160 ad something like that is because they were
pushing north from Hadrian's wall and at this point they were trying to secure southern Scotland
because they were building the Antonine wall from the Clyde over to the Firth of Forth
and it took them about 12 years to build that wall with all the castles there's about 12 castles on
the Antonine wall. They actually discovered this a couple of decades ago when they were doing an
aerial survey on a particularly hot dry day you can see the outline of this fort here running
from here all the way back to the kids playground here before you get to Drumlanrig Castle itself.
This here would have been the area where the main gate was yeah looking out across the valley here.
there would have been a gate on all four sides actually the main gate was over here.
The officers quarters were at this side of the building yeah and then the barracks were running
in rows back in this direction. Just exactly here as Tibbers castle a 12th century castle
over in the trees there. When you look at a river like this, it's not
massive but it's still quite a significant barrier if you're trying to move men and horses
but in particular supplies yes, we're talking about food wooden carts that type of thing,
back then if you didn't need to build a bridge then don't build a bridge. Right here
there's a ford which is shallow water. Basically it was an easy place to cross the river
and that was still used right up through medieval times folks. Believe it or not whilst
I'm standing on a fort if you look here there was actually a roman camp here and another one here
on the opposite side, these would have been more temporary but still they would house
troops for significant periods of time. It's thought that the romans were essentially here
to control this river crossing. It's a reasonable size fort but by roman standards it wasn't that
big, It's thought to hold about 600 auxiliaries. If we look out through the valley here this is
Durisdeer. There's actually a fortlet out there as well and there's different fortlets in this area
so they would be rotating men and troops from here out into these fortlets in the hills around here.
The majority of these fortlets these smaller forts were along the roman roads folks yes.
This area was so important that its actually where we have three roman roads converged.
So they obviously saw it as being significant, now the very fact that we've got this
vast castle on the hill here tells you that importance continued throughout the centuries.
The Douglas's used this as a ford and as an area to control southwest Scotland.
It's much easier to come up through a river valley like this than it is to go through the mountains
and that's been the nature of warfare here in Scotland the invaders come up through the lowlands
the scots will try and hold the high ground, you see that to this day even still in different parts
of the world, of course it makes perfect sense. Like most invaders here in Scotland the romans
were not here for a particularly long period of time you know they came and they went. The period
between Hadrian's wall and the Antonine retreat let's call it was particularly short, they only
they manned the Antonine wall for about 25 years, when you consider it took them about 12 years to
build the thing and how much time and work and effort went over into subjugating the southern
part of the country here. Who really knows but one thing I do know if I was a local to this area
and the romans had built a wall south of here and they were in a process of occupying this territory
and building a wall north of here essentially making this the largest open-air prison on earth
I think I would still want to fight don't you? So eventually the romans gave up yeah and when they
abandoned the Antonine wall they also abandoned this fort here. It's thought that they set it on
fire, that would have been around 160 ad. And they were gone they went back south of the Hadrian's
wall and they never came back, pretty much the story of Scotland I have to say. Maybe it's the
weather! Well we're going to be riding home in the dark again, anyway that's it for this one guys I
really hope you liked it if you did give me a thumbs up subscribe down below maybe even hit
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another vlog or another install have a look at one of these here and I'll see you in the next one.