windmills, wallace and the sneak into stirling

This is the part of the Kidnapped Trail that I thought might be best tackled on a bike (at Nick's suggestion). How wrong I was.

With the wind farm of Uam Var shadowing us much of the way, we followed the edges of fields, dodged across dual carriageways, found little-known footbridges and generally kept to the margins. Indeed we crept up on the Wallace Monument and Stirling Bridge without hardly anyone seeing us - just as David & Alan might have done 250 years or so earlier.

The *difference* of course is that the Wallace Monument wasn't there in their day. But my what an impressive and important structure it is! It leaves no doubt that you have stepped out of Rob Roy country and into William Wallace land (from Neeson to Gibson, eh, Brendon?).

Yet again, Stevenson has deliberately walked us into an important landscape. And in the book he chooses to get his characters there on an important date: the 23rd August - the day Wallace was 'martyred'. I suspect this mission to be in Stirling on the 23rd is what confuses Stevenson's timeline in this section of the book whereby he then 'loses' a day between here and getting to South Queensferry (Mr Rankeillor claims it's the 24th when David turns up in Chapter 27 but logically it should be the 25th.)

It's interesting to note too that Stevenson would have passed through his own adolescence watching the Memorial being built. And if that wasn't enough, it was the Stevenson family business that built the New Stirling Bridge just yards away from where David & Alan keep watch on the little old lady crossing the Old Bridge.

This isn't just a history lesson then, it's also a man looking back and re-casting and re-imagining scenes from his own childhood. This mix of the personal, the public and the political is, I think, one of the things that makes Kidnapped such a great book.

Comments

[Polly]

Tim I did it!

Your account of sneaking into Stirling made me laugh with your erstwhile "Alan"...piping up from behind and infront of camera. I thought that you crossing the dual carriageway mirrored Alan and David trying to cross New Stirling Bridge...perhaps a beaten up car breaking down on the motorway and being moved on by sleeping transport police would have been fitting for you both to flee from? I wanted you to burst forth and lament your journey and weary bones in the same way that the old lady did :)

[kidmapper]

Polly

You made it! Huzzah!There's plenty of time for lamenting weary bones I can tell you. I like the idea of actual re-enactments or updated scenarios, but maybe they shouldn't involve the police, eh?

Certainly it's something we can work on for next year...