After a travel day ending at the Curate's Egg Chateau (a small castle
hotel with an annexe for plebs, in which we stayed), we went to
Bannockburn, as you do.
The visitor's centre was a model of its kind, not merely well-meaning:
scholarly and lively. The film, especially, was brilliant at making
the battle itself as clear as possible given the lack of factual
material about Day 2. The model, the diorama, and film together made
the penning in and encircling of the English very clear: "I have put
you in the ring; now let us see if you can dance".
There's a display of a forensic artist's sculpted rendition of the
Bruce in old age based on a cast taken of his skull in the 1860s. The
bones showed signs of leprosy as well as of war wounds; his left eye
socket was larger than his right, and he was big, nearly six feet tall
and big-boned with it. The face the artist built was thus strong,
sturdy, square, but crumpled, wrecked. The expression in the eyes was
our equivalent of Victorian sentiment but believable, because it
showed a knowledgeable man well aware of death, including his own.
The chainmail shirts were bizarrely therapeutic because they were real
and very heavy. Moray and Katherine felt as if they had a massage; Tim
could hardly stand under the weight of his!
Then, there's the huge statue of the Bruce and his battlefield:
pictures to follow.
