Visit to Inverary Castle

While Toadlet rode on her hack, Toad and I went to have lunch at Inverary Castle, enjoying the meadows and roadside flowers along the way between the stables and the castle.

Speedwell meadow

Daisies and buttercups

Wild Columbines (Aquilegia vulgaris), "Snow-in-Summer", and yellow Welsh poppies
on a roadside bank

Bluebells, pignut and buttercups

Toad enjoyed looking at the paintings, including works of famous painters, and the muskets and halberds. I enjoyed looking at the old kitchen and the displays of Bronze age items found in Argyll, such as these Bronze Age pins and a small wooden quaich.

Who fancies cooking on this hotplate?

A neat way to store food

In the visitors' cafe where we ate lunch – smoked salmon and cream cheese in a toasted bagel, served with salad (very nice) – there was a slice of an old sycamore tree with various stages of its growth marked: the execution of the ninth Earl of Argyll in 1685 near the centre of one of the two young trees that grew into one, and the Second World War in one of the outer rings. The tree blew down in 1989.

The views in and from the gardens were lovely but we hadn't time to do them justice as we had to go and collect Toadlet. We will have to go again some time.

View from the castle terrace of the bridge across the River Aray

Bluebells, Red Campion and ferns

Toadlet also tucked into smoked salmon and cream cheese sandwiches but this time at the Brambles Restaurant in Inverary before we headed back to the car. I liked the flowers growing on the sea wall and a garden wall as we walked.