Tag Archives: bird

Linlithgow Palace, a.k.a. Wentworth Prison

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A labyrinthine ruin on a promontory overlooking beautiful Linlithgow Loch and Peel (royal park), Linlithgow Palace stands proudly within the town of Linlithgow, west of Edinburgh. The palace served both as the site of Mary Queen of Scots’ birthplace and of filming for Outlander STARZ’s Wentworth Prison exterior and corridors in episodes 115 and 116.

Linlithgow, pronounced like Glasgow with a long “o” sound, means “loch in the damp hollow” in Gaelic. For apt description, more places in Scotland should probably bear the same name.

With four towers and accompanying spiral stone staircases, straight steps up and down to various corridors, hidden nooks, prisoner pits, larger chambers pitch black at mid-day, and overlooking terraces to the interior, Linlithgow Palace feels like a kind of jungle gym for older kids and energetic adults. But that’s not all it has to offer.

Isolated corner courtyards, numerous royal chambers, a great hall with adjoining kitchen, a chapel, an elaborate central courtyard fountain, a small accompanying museum, and a visitor centre gift shop nearly complete the picture.

On our first day while staying in Edinburgh, we consulted our Outlander day-tour guide about the time needed to explore Hopetoun House (the Duke of Sandringham residence in episode 109: 2+ hours) and Linlithgow Palace (about an hour). She also said she preferred the latter, so we chose the ruins over the polished stately home and were glad we did.

Linlithgow Palace is significantly larger and more complex than other ruined castles like Doune and Blackness, which we saw on the Outlander tour, and there’s a good historical reason for that: 6 centuries of Scottish and British royal residence, strategic military use, and general admiration.*

The earliest recorded royal occupation of the palace was by King David I in 1143. Destroyed by fire in 1424, the medieval palace was aggressively rebuilt by James I, becoming the grand royal house of the Stewart court. Developed and remodeled over the centuries by different kings, the palace owes most of its current shape to the 15th-century efforts of James IV.

In 1746, the fire that sealed the fate of the palace occurred three months before the Battle of Culloden, which ended Jacobite hopes for restoring the Stewarts to Britain’s throne. Linlithgow Palace has remained uninhabited ever since but was placed in State care as of 1853, and is now a Historic Scotland property. This site is one of only two places we visited where I purchased a book about it. The other was Culloden Battlefield.

Both places piqued my interest with their prominent use in the original story (Culloden) of Outlander and in the TV adaptation’s series 1 filming (Linlithgow  for Wentworth Prison exterior and corridors). My respect and wonder have only grown from seeing them up close and first hand. Much more later from this blog about Culloden.

Below are some corridor shots of locations in the palace I’m guessing found use during filming of episodes 115, “Wentworth Prison,” and 116, “To Ransom a Man’s Soul,” the darkest times in series 1 for our heroes Claire Fraser and especially Jamie Fraser.

Rooks and pigeons roost willy-nilly undisturbed and are the new kings and queens of the palace. But the available notches, ledges, sheltered stalls, window frames, crumbled walls, and even window seats far outnumber the birds occupying them when the public’s around.

Views from the northwest tower, housing Queen Margaret’s Bower (the sheltered tower room up the stairs shown below), reward those who brave the spiralling climb. Visiting Linlithgow Palace on our last full day in Scotland was well worth the extra trip from Glasgow, even in steady rain.

* My source for the historical information was Linlithgow Palace: The Official Souvenir Guide, published by Historic Environment Scotland.

For more information about Linlithgow Palace, its long and fascinating history, its connection to Outlander, or about other Historic Scotland properties, start with:

To learn about dining, accommodation, and other things to do in the surrounding town of Linlithgow, see the links provided at the Linlithgow page of VisitScotland.com.

For a list and brief descriptions of (mostly) season 1 Outlander filming and book-related sites, as well as our plans leading up to the trip, go to Five-Phrase Friday (38): Scotland. Upcoming posts will offer thoughts and advice about Outlander tours and different aspects of travel in Scotland. 

Here’s what I’ve covered so far:

Poem “Hawk Side” Wins Contest

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In lieu of Five-Phrase Friday, I’m re-posting a poem and its revision with an update. The revised poem won a poetry contest I entered last month, National Poetry Month. I originally posted the poem as part of my series called Wild Verses: Bits of Nature Poetry. In it, I asked the question, “Is it ever too late to revise a poem?” While not a definitive answer, the contest win would suggest it wasn’t too late for this particular poem, titled “Hawk Side.”

“Wild Verses: Bits of Nature Poetry, 9 of 10” was originally posted July 14, 2015:

For this bit of nature poetry, I decided to show two very different drafts of essentially the same poem side by side (or one over the other, as it were). The first draft was written in 1999, the revision finished last month.

Food for thought: Is it ever too late to revise a poem? What is lost or gained in the process?

“Hawk-side” – November 1999:

Hawks high on fences.
Hawks poised perching there.
Hawks like stoic kitten princesses,
huntresses on fences along a highway.

Looking out for morsels of mice
and sparrows.
Too many fully empty deer
there are--stuffed wholly empty.
Lying stiff, the wholly empty
deer await the hawks.

Hungry hawks find food elsewhere.
Full hawks, flecked with brown and white;
russet-brown, russet-white at the meal.

Flash of a truck, fleck of a bird,
crowning a rotten wooden fence
post, low on a highway hill.

I pass another, passenger-side,
hawk-side.

“Hawk Side” – June 2015:

Along the highway fence,
a hawk posts tall, keen 
and poised, as stoic as 
a feral kitten princess, 
knowing more, careening 
inside for hot morsels 
of mice and sparrows.

Too many deer fully empty, 
ahead. Stuffed with glass,
colliding stiff, hollowed-out 
doe and buck parts await 
the crows, and the hawks.
Ravenous hawks wrench 
food from life elsewhere.

Full hawks fleck brown and 
white. Russet brown, white-
stained-russet lines blur—
feather edges, straw bones, 
red shoulders, tails, secret 
coverts, cheeks smeared, 
blood talons, beaks dripping.

Blip of a truck, fleck of a bird,
the huntress crowns the rot of 
wooden fence posts (leaving 
carcasses for cars and crows), 
low on a highway hill. Sharp-
eyed, one passed on the right—
passenger side, hawk side.

copyright C. L. Tangenberg

Red-shouldered_hawk_image

Backyard Brief: Mystery Bird Unveiled

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In my post last Monday about the wildlife in my backyard, I mentioned I was uncertain about the identity of one of the birds frequenting my feeders. As it turns out, it was neither a chipping sparrow nor a white-crowned sparrow, as I had conjectured. In fact, it wasn’t a sparrow at all–it was a female red-winged blackbird!

Using my bird guide books, I was able to sleuth it out and identify her. The books mentioned that female red-winged blackbirds are commonly mistaken for sparrows. Here’s what Mrs. Red-Winged Blackbird looks like in my backyard.

She’s the first of the 4 birds from top in the above group photo, followed by a mourning dove pair and a male house sparrow.

She was darker than I had remembered, with heavy brown streaking along breast and belly and a bright white eyebrow against that darkness. A buff or gray cheek and reddish shading on her throat also help to distinguish her. The beak is longer, narrower, and pointier than a sparrow’s, and the tail is longer and more fanned. There is also the distinctive tail bobbing behavior, and she is a larger bird.

Although of similar shape and behavior, her mate, in addition to being larger than his lady, looks rather different. . . .

Another male is hanging out with these two, but it is a duller black, almost brown, and without a prominent yellow wing stripe of maturity, so I think that’s a juvenile.

Mystery solved!

Pompadour Playboy, 2/27/14

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Pompadour Playboy, 2/27/14

male northern cardinal, first visitor to new bird feeder on our back deck on an inhospitably windy February day

What else can you find in my backyard? Get out your binoculars . . .