Fa’side Castle Forever

Up we drove, out of England and into Scotland, stopping just outside of Edinburgh at Fa’side Castle where we had reserved their tower suite for just one night. Neither our pocketbooks nor our brains could handle such lavish treatment for any longer than that. Just kidding; it was just the pocketbooks.

The lady of the castle, Sue Brash, met us as we ducked through the five-foot-tall arched stone doorway. She showed us up the narrow, circular castle staircase, the first five steps of which were original from the fourteenth century. The fourteenth century. In their extensive research, they found the first mention of the Fawside estate from 1124 A.D., the castle proper having been built a couple hundred years later. Since its construction, it changed hands several times, its ruins owned by the Fa’side Preservation Committee from 1968 until a couple bought it in 1976 and restored it. The Brash family purchased it in 1989. They’ve found upwards of thirteen different spellings, so they’ve decided on “Fa’side” to imply that there’s a choice.

Our first stop on the staircase was around third-floor level, where Sue opened a heavy arched wooden door with a big metal sliding lock. We “minded our heads” as we ducked through and found our sitting room. Adorned with leather furniture, lamps galore, ornately painted wood-beamed ceilings, a wood-burning stove, a piano, a stone chess set, a tartaned-off fourteenth-century loo, and even a jail, this room was the stuff of little girl fantasies. And it only got better from there.

Our bedroom was up another seven million or so castle stairs, the bed, chairs, dressers, and armoires plush and fancy. A plate of grapes sat on the dining table, and a set of China was just waiting for tea time. Even an antique telescope decorated one of the alcoves. Surely I could have been Queen Anne Boleyn reincarnated but, as Thayer so lovingly told me once during my Tudors-on-Showtime obsession, “You are my queen that I love and do not want to kill. You are my queen that I do not cut the head off of.” My hubs—he knows how to treat a lady.

We left the castle only briefly to grab some dinner in the nearby town of Musselburgh, but we hurried back to spend every waking hour soaking up castle life. We sat at our table and had tea in precious China cups, we lit a fire in the sitting room and curled up in chairs, reading as much as we could find about castles, William Wallace, and British and Scottish Royalty, and we had a bath in the enormous claw-foot bathtub. Bedtime finally rolled around, but I didn’t want to sleep, for that meant my time as a queen was up. As we lay in bed, I kept Thayer awake with a steady stream of “Hey, honey!” making him laugh until even I got too tired.

The next morning we woke up in our king-sized bed and had some leisurely morning tea. I took another bath—heck no, I was not going to let that mammoth thing go to waste—and we packed up and headed out, Thayer gallantly lugging our suitcase down the many, many, many castle stairs.

Before departing, we chatted with the Brash family and learned a bit about farming life in Scotland and its limitations on their travel ambitions. Perhaps real castle life was not for us after all. After both of their dogs claimed ownership of our rental car in the only way dogs can, we set off for Inverness.

Until next time!

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