Murthly Castle Entrance
Path
Close to the castle
Views from the tree tunnel
Some trees
Birnam path
Close to the real one
Real one
Nice bridge
Birnam
Birnam Oak
The Hedges
Nice views
Field close to the hedges
Meikleour Beech Hedges
Curious road trip around Birnam /
discovering Scotland
This was a curious trip because we did some research about... Strange places (I like them, the stranger the better) and yeah we found some, I am gonna leave the one that I liked the most for the end :P First of all we decided to go to Murthly Castle, you can’t really visit the property itself cause it is not open to the public, but you can visit the surroundings. As always we parked the car at the entrance, because we thought that it couldn’t be far... Wrong again! We were walking for more than half an hour until we saw some of the buildings, but in any case it was a nice walk, with gigantic trees and some tree tunnels, cool. Unfortunately, you can’t visit the Castle grounds either but in any case, it was interesting.
After this we went to Birnam, looking for the famous Birnam Oak, an iconic Oak that was the inspiration for Shakespeare's Macbeth as one of the trees the famous Birnam Wood. Before you can see the actual ancient tree there are some fun signs saying: *It's not me, I'm a sycamore...* and *Not me either, keep going...* When you do reach the Birnam Oak, you will know it because it is enormous, it is so big that some of the lower branches are propped up with wooden supports! We were there just for a while because it was raining a lot, so we had the time to visit the tree and we ran back to the car!
And the last stop, this one is interesting, it is called the Meikleour Beech Hedges and it is just the tallest and longest hedge on Earth (average height is around 30m). You can park the car quite close (there are some space nearby) and just go walking to see them, you won’t be there for hours, but it is a quite cool and different place to see. Take care with the cars, I was taking some pics in the middle of the road, I mean I had to! but! Being extremely careful :P
Some tips:
- Park the car where you can, there is a small carpark for visiting the Oaks, for the other two places just good luck! :P