First you had to get over the city walls.
Then across a wide open space, moat, and through the outer bailey walls.
Then across another exposed area, another moat with a half moon "shot-deflecting" artillery battlement where you could be picked off by handguns as you crossed the parade grounds (added in 1540 by Henry VIII when he feared attack from the Pope after tearing apart the monasteries), and through the walls of the inner bailey.
Then you could attempt to storm the keep through some mighty massive walls.
Built on the hotly contested west side of the English-Scottish border, the castle's been occupied by, under siege, or the prison of numerous people including the Romans, Mary Queen of Scots and her entourage, Border Reiver (aka raider) Kinmont Willie Armstrong, the Royalists & Parliamentarians in the Civil War, and Bonnie Prince Charles & the Jacobites to name a few. The "dungeon" in the keep (aka wine cellar in more peaceful times) holds the famous licking stones where Jacobite prisoners, desperate for water, licked the sandstone smooth in the corners to extract any possible moisture. That makes you look at water damage in a whole new way. The castle also has some of the finest ancient graffiti I've ever seen in the keep. There's some debate on whether it was carved by prisoners or bored soldiers under siege, but I guess they're really one in the same aren't they?
The castle is still active today, housing the King's Own Royal Border Regiment as it has for the last for 300 years. In the inner bailey, there's a museum dedicated to the regiment on site along with an interesting collection of Roman finds.
So, after touring one of the buildings charged with holding back the Scots all of those years, we decided that we were so close we should just drive to Scotland to see what all of the fuss was about. (And so my Aunt Pat & Uncle Chuck could say they'd been to Scotland :) We randomly pinpointed the city of Gretna Green since it was on the highway right across the border. It appeared to be a sleepy village, but at the same time, ready for a modern invasion. It had a free large public parking area (rare) for both cars and coaches (aka buses) and bathrooms designed for crowd control with a massive line of stalls and "in" and "out" doors. Even some of the airports around here have smaller bathrooms. Just off the parking lot was a massive shopping complex with all the Scottish paraphernalia a tourist could want. I figured it was just some kind of tour bus bathroom break spot.
Pat later found out from his co-workers that Gretna Green is the Las Vegas of weddings around here. When England toughened their marriage laws in 1753, people started fleeing over the border to Gretna Green's Blacksmith's Shops to tie the knot. This happened for a couple of reasons 1) Scotland's marriage law is and was more lenient than England's, allowing underage people to get married without parental consent and 2) according to Wikipedia, "Scottish law allowed for 'irregular marriages', meaning that, so long as a declaration was made, in front of two witnesses, almost anybody had the authority to conduct the marriage ceremony." So the blacksmiths, the forgers of two metals, became "anvil priests," the forgers of love. Although some of the laws have changed, Wikipedia says, "Today, Gretna Green remains one of the most popular wedding venues in the world, and thousands of couples still come from all over the world to be married 'over the anvil' at Gretna Green."
Appropriately, we saw a wedding party leaving while we were there, but thought nothing of it. We thought the "Blacksmith Shop" had something to do with metal work. Stupid tourists :)
* All photos courtesy of my Aunt Pat's camera. Gretna Green photo courtesy of Wikipedia.
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