How do you fancy an historical road trip through beautiful countryside and quaint villages,
with visits to an ancient monastery, peaceful beaches and
a Pre-historic monument? We ll meet Scotland s most famous
Queen and America s most famous sailor... and finish with and a turning point for
Robert the Bruce? If you re interested
in the people places and events in Scottish history, then click the subscribe button at
the bottom right of the screen and ring the notification bell
to find out when I upload new videos. In the meantime, let me take you on a journey.
We re heading out on a fantastic journey, but it starts off with questions, questions,
questions. ...and I wanted
to start with a couple of places that were home to the Scottish father of the American Navy.
John Paul Jones was the Scottish father of the American Navy.
Now I m not going to go over his whole story here,
I ve made a video about him and I ll give you a link in a minute.
But I did want to bring you here to his playground as he grew up.
This is Caresthorn. ...where he first helped fix boats and
gave thought to the sea by this tidal firth. No doubt he watched the ocean come and go...
maybe wondering where it would take him later in life.
You can walk along the beach as he would have done and cast your mind back
to when this now quiet hamlet was a thriving little port.
I say quiet little hamlet, it does get busier at lunchtime here at the Steamboat Inn.
I ve got fond memories of sitting here on a sunny day
enjoying a meal and a pint of Guinness with one of my Patreon members that lives nearby.
Patreon membership is a way to support the channel.
It helps pay for the chatty man that sits next to me on the drive and makes the
images look pretty when we stop. The channel couldn t survive on
advertising revenue alone, so if you can help There s a link for patreon membership top right.
The point is that it s a lovely spot to sit, have a drink, lunch chat...
and sometimes sunshine... but we re heading three miles up the road
to the John Paul Jones Birthplace Museum Opens at 10.30am.
You should check all the timings for everything we mention today.
Now on the day we visited the museum opened at 10.30am...
so check the timings for everything we mention today.
This is a great location. You have a beach on one side
and Arbrigland Gardens on the other, as well as an overnight spot for campervans.
Of course the reason we re here is to celebrate the Scottish father of the American Navy.
The museum itself has lots of lovely little artefacts and tells
the story of this Pirate Patriot. Having heard his tale you ll come
out the other side inspired to get a deeper understanding of how this incredible Trans
Atlantic sailor lived his life. Enter the cottage in which he
grew up and your transported back in time. I love places like this where you can get a feel
for exactly what life would have been like for the people who made history.
People born in ordinary circumstances can achieve the extraordinary.
His true achievements were at sea.... but this is like genuinely going back in time.
You can only be a pirate patriot for a moment, because there s more to come yet
John Paul Jones left Scotland under a cloud.
...but you can find out more about that in the full video I made about him.
Just click top right. Are you getting in?
John Paul Jones did leave Scotland under a bit of a cloud...
but he wasn t the only person to leave Scotland under a cloud...
45 minutes down the road and 200 years earlier we ll
find out about somebody else who left under a cloud
First short detour off the main road takes you to Orchardton Tower.
An idyllic setting where you can get a wee peek at medieval life
at a unique and charming circular tower from the mid 1400s.
You re probably thinking that tower would have looked great with some drone shots.
I thought so too... and if Matt hadn t crashed
the drone into a tree... Just use your imagination
This is Dundrennan Abbey.
Like many of our ancient abbeys it s now a majestical ruin, but what a history...
Like so many abbeys in Scotland it was first built by David I....
buuuuuut Galloway wasn t
actually part of Scotland at the time... this was a period when Hebridean Vikings
had produced the Gall Gael. Gall being Gaelic for strangers.
Long blonde hair, horned hats, rapey, pillage robber types...
I know some of that s caricature, I m just trying to lighten the mood.
Anyway the word for strangers Gall, gives us the name for Galloway.
Just as Somerled s Lordship of the Isles was a semi-independent Hebridean Lordship,
Galloway wasn t quite Scotland, though Fergus of Galloway did work
with King David and they are both involved in building this Abbey.
So Dundrennan has seen the transition of Galloway becoming part of Scotland.
It s been a monastic centre of trade and agricultural development.
This close to the border it s been damaged
during the Wars of Independence, and of course at the Reformation.
Of course, the most famous visitor to the Abbey was Mary Queen of Scots.
After she d fled south from the fateful Battle of Langside she
spent the night here with the monks, and it was from their pier nearby that she
waved goodbye to Scotland on 16th May 1568
She thought she would be coming back in a few months.
The past is preserved in what s left of these walls...
and when we visited, there was protective fencing, as Historic Scotland try to assess
how best to preserve the remains for the future. By the time you come more will be accessible...
...but a lot of what s really interesting is in the stone store...
where remnants of the stoneworks are kept in safety.
It s worth a visit if for no other reason than to consider the mystery of the Unknown Abbot.
The effigy that would have lain above his stone coffin shows him robed with crozier in hand...
but with a dagger in his chest as he grasps it.
At the feet of the assassinated abbot is his assailant,
who has in turn been critically wounded in punishment for his murderous activities.
The abbey spanned four hundred years of activity as the ups and downs and religious rollercoaster
ran through its idyllic setting h there you
are. Have you been waiting there all that time? That s me refreshed. To the chambered cairn.
You won t be spending part of your day trying to work out how to get a fat man up a tree
to retrieve footage from a crashed drone, so you might continue round the southern coast
to Whithorn Priory and St Ninian s cave. You might turn north up to Glentrool
and the beautiful spot where Robert the Bruce s fortunes turned...
but we re going to make our last stop the most ancient location on this road trip.
This is Cairn holy. It s a truly amazing place.
Sometimes as I tell stories from Scotland s history...
people looking through today s prism will argue in the comments section
as to whether this guy was British because it was post 1707,
or that guy was Scottish because his grandad was Norman,
or this or that or nuance of nonsense to justify politics, pontification or pedantry.
Then you come to places like this.
Thousands of years ago people gathered here to bid farewell to those they loved or respected...
without ever a thought for what Scotland or Britain would ever be....
They had more important things on their mind. Connecting with their people,
their ancestors, their gods, and nature. ...and they left us this to remember them...
maybe they wondered how they would be remembered.
They knew this place.., but could never have imagined this time.
Each generation opens a door into the next...
They walk their path... and the next door opens...
and the next. Little by little tools of stone and bone become metal.
Hunting becomes farming becomes industry, engineering becomes huge,
then tiny till all that matters are ones and zeros. Hard graft becomes software.
Whenever I visit these places I always find myself wondering what was in the
minds of the people who built them... and what they d think of the idea that what
they built here could be captured in an image, shown to them, or sent to the skies then shown
to somebody else on the other side of a world they may not even have thought of as round.
Our ancestors who first laid theirs to rest in these chambered
cairns could never have imagined us. Maybe we can never truly understand them...
but across the millennia we could both look up to a view that warms the heart...
and say: This is home.
You can support the channel with a thumbs up, a click top right to become a Patreon member,
or a click of the link below to buy me a coffee. There s another road trip video
coming up on screen now. Tha mi an dochas