A trip to Dirleton Castle, East Lothian, in Scotland

We were out Castle hunting again yesterday and this time we went to see Dirleton Castle, which is close to North Berwick - around 40mins drive from where we live in Edinburgh.

Its a beautiful old castle, with the oldest parts dating back to the 13th century (800 years old).

The castle has huge defensive walls and sits on a rocky outcrop. The walls were well needed because its seen its fair share of action over the years.

Although its a partial ruin, there is still a lot to see, however, when there yesterday they were undertaking a lot of repair work and as such a lot of areas where barriered off. However, there was still a lot to see.

The castle is located in the village of the same name, and dominates the centre of town. It looks pretty lovely with its red standstone walls.

The castle has really beautiful gardens, which is what you see when first entering.

It also has a lovely bowling green (above) which must be used by the local village. What a fantastic setting for a bowling green with the castle overlooking it in the background.

There were a lot of lovely plants around, and I really liked these thistles which were in the main garden area. The thistle is the national flower of Scotland, so I always love seeing them.

Although a lot of areas were closed off to the public we could still get down into these vaulted areas, which is where a lot of the castle stores were held. They were pretty huge - quite impressive to see.

At the far end of the vault was this old kitchen area - you can see their two bread ovens there.

Sandstone is quite abundant in this area, and hence it was used to build a lot of the castle walls. It gives it those lovely colours you see above, but it suffers badly from erosion - which also gives it a lot of great character.

The castle saw action in the wars between the Scottish and the English (which would have been sometime around the 13th century). It also played a part in the English civil war much later (17th century) when it was attacked by Oliver Cromwell - which explains some of its current condition.

Probably the most striking feature there was this lovely dovecot (above). It was pretty big and would have held thousands of pigeons, which therefore gave the castle a ready source of meat. This is a common feature of many castles in this part of Scotland.

The internals of the dovecot were just stunning, and you can see all of the nest boxes for the pigeons, which are all built of stone, lining the walls and going nearly to the top.

It was pretty impressive to see. This is probably about the best preserved dovecot I've seen. The sunlight was coming right in the top to light it up beautifully while we were there.

The walls at the front were very impressive, and you can see the main entrance would have had some kind of drawbridge back in the day. The castle certainly fits the image of a ye-olde castle thats been in the wars - absolutley lovely to see !

The info board above showed what it would have looked like at its peak, which would have been pretty impressive. Its only really the buildings to the right side that remain today.

It certainly was a lovely trip, and we had great weather for it. We loved it and certainly would go back again to see it. Well worth the visit !

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