The '45

 Culloden - sabbatical 2, week 4

Another train ride took us to Inverness.  The hop-on-hop-off bus has two loops, the first out to Culloden Moor, site of the last "land battle" to take place on the island of Great Britain (but not, oddly, the last invasion of Britain - more on that next post!).  It took place in 1746, between the Jacobite forces of Bonnie Prince Charlie and the English forces under the Duke of Cumberland (and featuring a young officer named James Wolfe, who later won the Plains of Abraham).  It resulted in a rout of the Jacobite Highlanders and the start of years of oppression of Highland culture.  Craig had already visited (with brother Paul in 1993), but the visitor's centre is much expanded and improved since then.  There are plenty of artifacts and interpretive signs, and of course the moor/battlefield itself, with flags demarking the starting positions of the two armies.

Just down the road (or a 30-minute walk, which is what we did) from the moor are the Clava Cairns, 4000-year-old bronze age burial chambers.  There are also a number of standing stones on the site, which will look familiar to fans of the Outlander series (as Yolanda is), as the site of Claire Randall's time-traveling.