Filming in England & Scotland

At left: on the Isle of Inchmahome, Lake of Menteith, the ruins of an Augustinian Priory which once played host to the young (5 year old) Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary stayed a few weeks while the English came dangerously close to Stirling in hopes of capturing Mary and marrying her off to her cousin Edward, son of Henry VIII. Instead, Mary went to France and married the future French king.

It is the summer of 2008 and the dollar has sunk to new lows aginst the euro and the pound. Petrol (gasoline,) is at an all time high and various workers in both England and France are contemplating strikes against the oil companies to protest the exorbitant rise in the price of diesel fuel. Not the best time, perhaps, to be shooting new film in Great Britain and France, but we have a project to finish: “Etched in Stone: Scotland to Provence.”

Marsha is still in Louisiana taking care of some business, but she will join me in London next week and we will go to the south of France together. I have already done some filming in London. Quite by chance I got close to the first rehearsal of the annual “Trooping of the Colour.” The rehearsals are just like the show except the Queen isn’t there. Exiting the parade ground at St. James’s Palace, they follow the Mall to Buckingham Palace. Horse Guards and Cavalry in silver, black and gold. Coldstream and Grenadier Guards strutting their stuff in bright redcoats and bearskins riffling in the breeze.

When I arrived in London at the end of May, the weather was “typically English:” rain and cloud and complaining from every side. Summer had apparently taken place sometime back in April. However, the day I left for Scotland, the weather improved and by the time I reached the Lake District, summer was on its way.

I borrowed a tent, a sleeping bag and an air mattress from my hosts in the south and the first day I drove my rented Peugeot about 350 miles to the Lake District. This was nearly all motorway driving so there was none of that roundabout, stop and go feeling of the lesser British highways. By the time I reached Burns Farm campground it was about 7 p.m. I managed to catch some evening light — it remains light until about 10 p.m. — at the nearby Castlerigg Stone Circle.

Castlerigg dates back about 5000 years. There are three circles of similar size in the Lake District and they became quite popular with visitors in the early 19th Century when Wordsworth, the poet, lived nearby. A custodian informed me that Wordsworth regarded Castlerigg as a tourist trap: he took his visitors to see an alternative circle, Long Meg and Her Daughters.

The weather was in the process of changing that very evening; it delivered one last torrential gasp (luckily I hadn’t pitched my tent yet) and basically cleared up for the next few days. In the morning I arose with the sun and went up to Castlerigg, which was shrouded in an atmospheric morning fog. A mystical aura was created by the stones, and their guardian sheep, outlined in the mist.

The English Lake District is an area of extraordinary beauty, a National Park and a holiday destination for hikers, walkers, campers and poets. I visited the town of Keswick on Derwent Water, Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage, and Copt Howe, a recent (1999) discovery of stone age markings on giant boulders. It seems the markings had been obscured by moss for decades.

Onward to Scotland. I have cousin in Dumfries who offered to feed me and put me up in her guest room for the night while I went off to film in Galloway. Whithorn Priory has a special place in the spiritual history of Scotland, as it, not Iona, is where Christianity was introduced to the Picts and Scots of the 4th Century.

There are also a couple of very impressive ruins of Cistercian Abbeys in this part of the world. There’s the reddish stone of New Abbey, commonly called Sweetheart Abbey, and therein lies a tale. Formally it’s “New” because, although it was built in the 13th Century, there is the older
Dundrennan Abbey nearby.

Dundrennan is most famously known for housing Mary Queen of Scots during her last night in Scotland. She made the fateful decision of throwing herself on the mercy of her cousin Elizabeth I, and for Mary personally it turned out very badly. Of course these “piles of old stones” (in the words of my mother-in-law, bless her) must have a story to give them meaning and drama. Many of my Scottish stones comprise part of the Mary Queen of Scots story.

I have filmed something new, too. The Falkirk Wheel was designed to provide the missing link in the canal system that connects the North Sea to the Irish Sea from Edinburgh to Glasgow. Completed in 2002, the wheel is like a giant carnival ride that takes the place of several locks by swinging barges between the Union and the Firth and Clyde canals.

I had a week on the road, connecting with family and making new acquaintances along the way. I got the car back without scraping into any stone walls with my off-side doors. And if you can overcome the expense, well Europe just seems to get more interesting all the time. And British food is — well, it’s brilliant!