John has a Castle and the 700th Anniversary of The Battle of Bannockburn

I know you all want to hear about John's Castle:)

John's Great-Great-Grandmother Is Barbara McMillan, She was born in Kintyre, Scotland in the 1850's. The MacMillan Clan is one of the oldest Clans in Scotland. Now I know you are asking about the spelling, we did too. There are many different spellings for MacMillan because the literacy was not good back then so when the person spelling the name might spell it different than the next person.

The MacMillan Clan has a House 30 minutes from Glasgow in Finlaystone, Scotland
Here is the Link to see the clan website
http://www.clanmacmillan.org

They still have a Chief and when he dies the son will become the new Chief and I assume would live in the house. We plan on going one day and having tea with the Chief since John's part of the McMillan name! I don't know if I am more excited or John.

I often tell John how we do so much here that we would never do in Arizona. When the SuperBowl is in town, we would never go to the events because parking would be terrible. But here we do it all!!! In a couple weeks Glasgow is hosting the Commonwealth Games and we will be at all the fun family events. 

According to Wikipedia.....The Battle of Bannockburn was in 1314, it was a significant victory in the First War of Scottish War of Independence. Stirling Castle was a Scottish Royal Fortress, occupied by the English, and was under siege by the Scottish Army. Edward II of England tried to get it back but was defeated by Robert the Bruce of Scotland!!!!

Why they call it Bannock Burn is because the stream between the two sides was called Bannock Burn. 

There is a really nice Visitors Centre at the Battle of Bannockburn. You can go in and they have 3D reenactments of the Battle.
http://battleofbannockburn.com

The 700th Anniversary was a large event. While we were standing in the queue aka line, the people in front of us came all the way from Australia. Their ancestors were Scottish and they decided to plan their holiday around this event! They even had their clan tartans. Thats loyalty. 

They reenacted the Battle. Ava loved it! The MC was so funny. Living in Scotland you can see how different Scottish people are than English. It is like telling a Canadian they are from the USA. 

There was an area that had teepees and people dressed up like they did in the 1300's. I was told that people do this all the time on the weekends around Scotland! The guy standing with John Luke was actually from Holland but has a passion for Scottish history.

                      Ava met Merida from Brave. She told me she makes good money doing this now:)

We are extremely happy that we have kids and they make us go early. It opened at 10am and the first Battle was at noon. Our queue to wait was not long but when we got out of the Battle the queue was so long that I don't even know if the people waiting would all get into the next show. Plus the food vendors were crazy long. We were happy to go early and not wait!

It was a fun event to see Scottish history.