Today you can pick up an Eccles cake and feel the weight of the rich ingredients like butter, butter and butter…
May and September, so you can be flexible with your schedule. Expect to find athletic events with heavy objects like hammers, dancing competitions clad in tartan, and feats of strength including tug of war and caber tossing (it’s a pole!). Be aware that the Queen and her family
love the Highland Games, so you’ll be doing as the royals do! Your ears will ring with the sounds of bagpipes, which were the preferred alarm clock of choice by Queen Victoria. If you haven’t found any Scottish ancestry roots, don’t let that stop you from donning a kilt and trying a step or two of their lively dance moves. Oh, and there might be some whisky on
offer. If you are going to truly taste Scotland, you must wash it down with a single malt scotch whisky. Te malt refer- ences the malted barley and the single means it is from one distillery. ‘Whisky’ al- ways describes the Scottish products, while ‘whiskey’ is bourbon from the United States. Once tasted, it is impossible to mis- take the two. While volumes can be writ- ten about drinking this complex alcohol, you can break it down to a few flavour cat- egories: sweet, clean, smokey, peaty. Tere are many combinations of these, which means you will never run out of whisky to try!
So all of those games have made you
hungry? Why not try haggis? Don’t turn your nose up to it just yet, the description is way more disgusting than the taste. Vegans look away now. A national dish so celebrated, it has an entire day and poem dedicated to its creation. Burn’s Night is celebrated on January 25th, and a 1787 poem by Scottish poet Robert Burns “Address to the Haggis” describes the beauty and pride of this food as “great chieftain o’ the puddin-race.” Te earliest recipe reference dates to 1430, while other origins come from the wives of Scottish Highland cattle drivers making food from whatever ingredients were available, and stuffing them in a sheep’s stomach for the journey. Consuming one today is tradi- tionally offal (lamb’s heart and lungs), onions, oatmeal, salt, pepper, stock and water, all stuffed into a sheep’s stomach for boiling or roasting.
Wales Wales is a country, formerly a principality, and an important part of Great Britain. In the 1700s, King George III would offer Welsh titles to English gentlemen as re- ward. Tis is why the family who own Highclere Castle (where Downton Abbey was filmed) are known as Carnarvon, named from Carnarvon Castle in Wales. Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales is heir to the throne. His title has been given to the first-born son of the monarch since 1301 when the title was cre- ated for Edward of
Caernarfon, the future Edward II. Welsh green dragons, which do not exist, are one of the dragons men- tioned in Harry Potter, and there is a red dragon on the flag of Wales. Te red dragon is said to be the symbol of King Arthur but in Wales today you’ll have to experience their other native winged crea- ture: the red kite. Once pushed to the brink of extinction with only a few re- maining, they are now a strong breed that fly throughout the middle of Wales. Celebrate these airborne acrobats while visiting some of the 600 castles across the country. Te largest is Caerphilly Castle, the oldest is Chepstow Castle, the most medieval is Conwy Castle, and the most technically perfect is Beaumaris Castle. Harlech Castle was built by Edward I in the 1280s and was the last castle to fall to the Parliamentarian armies in 1647. Tese buildings give Wales the claim of “castle capital of the world”, and with 100 still standing and the other ruins still visible, it’s the best place to pretend to slay a dragon! Wales is blessed
with Snowdonia National Park, the perfect place for camping.
Established in 1951 and covering
6 FOCUS The Magazine March/April 2019
www.focus-info.org
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