A driving day, down to Carlisle.
On the way, we dropped into a wee house in Ecclefechan, near Lockerbie, the birthplace of Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish author, poet and philosopher. Not exactly on the beaten path, but a delightful place to visit!
Inside the house there was a terracotta maquette, the preliminary work for the bronze statue at the end of the town, at the point where Carlyle's mother bade him farewell as he left for his studies at the University of Edinburgh. (Just confidentially, the maquette is more approachable than the finished statue!)
Further along our path we visited Gretna Green. This is a bit of a tourist trap, but a fascinating place nevertheless. The way it has been commercialised reminded us of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (short form: Llanfairpwllgwyngyll), the town we visited in Wales. Gretna Green, just over the border from England became the destination for runaway (read: eloping) couples who wanted to take advantage of the far less restrictive marriage laws of Scotland, which allowed for "irregular marriages", meaning that if a declaration was made before two witnesses, almost anybody had the authority to conduct the marriage ceremony. The blacksmiths in Gretna became known as "anvil priests", and the blacksmith shop was, and still is, a popular wedding destination. The history of the place is fascinating, at times hilarious!
The anvil, the symbol of marriage at Gretna Green, is used by the blacksmith to forge metal to metal in the heat of the fire and, similarly, to join hearts together in the union of marriage. Thousands of hammer blows to this anvil have left their mark and it was replaced as the principal anvil in the forge in 1940.
We got to our hotel in Carlisle too late to do anything but check in and plan our attack for exploring Carlisle on the morrow.
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