TRAVEL TUESDAY 546 - DUNNOTTAR CASTLE, SCOTLAND

“The gloomy hills of Scotland keep my spirit clean” - Robert Louis Stevenson

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Dunnottar Castle (Scottish Gaelic: Dùn Fhoithear, "fort on the shelving slope") is a ruined medieval fortress located upon a rocky headland on the northeast coast of Scotland, about 3 kilometres south of Stonehaven in Aberdeenshire. The surviving buildings are largely of the 15th and 16th centuries, but the site is believed to have been fortified in the Early Middle Ages.

Dunnottar has played a prominent role in the history of Scotland through to the 18th-century Jacobite risings because of its strategic location and defensive strength. Dunnottar is best known as the place where the Honours of Scotland, the Scottish crown jewels, were hidden from Oliver Cromwell's invading army in the 17th century.

The property of the Keiths from the 14th century, and the seat of the Earl Marischal, Dunnottar declined after the last Earl forfeited his titles by taking part in the Jacobite rebellion of 1715. The castle was restored in the 20th century and is now open to the public. The castle ruins are spread over 1.4 hectares, The site is surrounded by steep cliffs that drop to the North Sea, 50 meters below.

A narrow strip of land joins the headland to the mainland, along which a steep path leads to the gatehouse. The various buildings within the castle include the 14th-century tower house as well as the 16th-century palace. Dunnottar Castle is a scheduled monument, and twelve structures on the site were listed buildings.

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TRAVEL TUESDAY 393 - NEUSCHWANSTEIN CASTLE, GERMANY

“As long as you keep one foot in the real world while the other foot's in a fairy tale, that fairy tale is going to seem kind of attainable.” -  Aaron Sorkin

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Neuschwanstein Castle (German: Schloss Neuschwanstein, English: "New Swanstone Castle") is a nineteenth-century Romanesque Revival palace on a rugged hill above the village of Hohenschwangau near Füssen in southwest Bavaria, Germany. The palace was commissioned by Ludwig II of Bavaria as a retreat and as an homage to Richard Wagner. Ludwig paid for the palace out of his personal fortune and by means of extensive borrowing, rather than Bavarian public funds.

The palace was intended as a personal refuge for the reclusive king, but it was opened to the paying public immediately after his death in 1886. Since then, more than 61 million people have visited Neuschwanstein Castle. More than 1.3 million people visit annually, with as many as 6,000 per day in the summer. The palace has appeared prominently in several movies and was the inspiration for Disneyland's Sleeping Beauty Castle and later, similar structures elsewhere.

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TRAVEL TUESDAY 378 - SARANDË, ALBANIA

“The wonderful thing about Albania is that not only is it extraordinarily beautiful and provides everything you could want out of a vacation (wonderful seafood, fresh farms, affordability, culture, and history), but it’s also surrounded by a nation of people who are some of the kindest, most welcoming people I’ve ever met.”  - Eliza Dushku

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Sarandë (definite Albanian form: Saranda; Greek: Άγιοι Σαράντα, romanized: Ágioi Saránta) is a city in the Republic of Albania and seat of Sarandë Municipality. Geographically, the city is located on an open sea gulf of the Ionian Sea within the Mediterranean Sea. Stretching along the Albanian Ionian Sea Coast, Sarandë has a Mediterranean climate with over 300 sunny days a year.

Sarandë is known for its blue deep waters of the Mediterranean. Near Sarandë are the remains of the ancient city of Butrint, a UNESCO World Heritage site. In recent years, Sarandë has seen a steady increase in tourists, many of them coming by cruise ship. Visitors are attracted by the natural environment of Sarandë and its archaeological sites. Sarandë is inhabited by a majority of ethnic Albanians, and also has a minority Greek community and as such it has been considered one of the two centres of the Greek minority in Albania.

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TRAVEL TUESDAY 377 - GAZIANTEP, TURKEY

Even with all our technology and the inventions that make modern life so much easier than it once was, it takes just one big natural disaster to wipe all that away and remind us that, here on Earth, we're still at the mercy of nature.” - Neil deGrasse Tyson

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Gaziantep Castle (Turkish: Gaziantep Kalesi) is a castle on top of a mound in the centre of Gaziantep, Turkey. First used as an observation point during the Hittite Empire, it was expanded into a castle during the Roman Empire. The hilltop was first used as an observation point during the period of the Hittite Empire. It was later expanded into a main castle by the Roman Empire in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. It underwent further expansion and renovation under Emperor Justinian I between AD 527 and 565. The circumference of the round shaped castle is 1,200 metres. The walls are built of stone and the castle has 12 bastions.

The castle has been renovated numerous times. It saw changes made during the reign of the Ayyubids in the 12th and 13th centuries, as well as the Ottoman Empire, and played an important role during the War of Independence of the early 20th century.

On the 6th of February 2023, a powerful and deadly earthquake struck southern and central Turkey. It is one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded in Turkish and Syrian history. It occurred 34 km west of the city of Gaziantep at 04:17 TRT (01:17 UTC), causing widespread damage and many fatalities in Southeast Turkey and Northwest Syria. With a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent) and a magnitude of at least Mww 7.8, the earthquake is tied with the 1939 Erzincan earthquake as the strongest instrumentally recorded earthquake to hit Turkey in modern times, while possibly being surpassed by the 1668 North Anatolia earthquake.

It is also the deadliest earthquake to strike the country since the 1999 İzmit earthquake. The earthquake was followed by numerous aftershocks, the strongest of which had a magnitude of Mww 7.5. This aftershock occurred 9 hours later, 4 km   north–northeast of Elbistan in Kahramanmaraş Province at 13:24 TRT (10:24 UTC). It also had a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX.  As a result of the earthquakes, over 5,000 people were killed and more than 24,000 were injured. Unfortunately, the WHO has predicted that the number of fatalities may increase by a factor of eight as more debris is removed and the true extent of the disaster is realised. Condolences to the families of the victims, and please support the relief effort in any way that you are able to.

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TRAVEL TUESDAY 337 - JAIPUR, INDIA

“Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow.” – Anita Desai

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Jaipur is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Rajasthan in Northern India. It was founded on 18 November 1727 by Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II, the ruler of Amber, after whom the city is named.  The city today has a population of 3.1 million. Jaipur is known as the Pink City of India.

The city is unusual among pre-modern Indian cities in the regularity of its streets, and the division of the city into six sectors by broad streets 34 m wide. The urban quarters are further divided by networks of gridded streets. Five quarters wrap around the east, south, and west sides of a central palace quarter, with a sixth quarter immediately to the east.  The Palace quarter encloses the Hawa Mahal palace complex, formal gardens, and a small lake.

Nahargarh Fort (shown here), which was the residence of the King Sawai Jai Singh II, crowns the hill in the northwest corner of the old city. The observatory, Jantar Mantar, is one of the World Heritage Sites. Included on the Golden Triangle tourist circuit, along with Delhi and Agra, Jaipur is an extremely popular tourist destination in Rajasthan and India.

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TRAVEL TUESDAY 267 - DURDLE DOOR, UK

“Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.” - Will Duran

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Durdle Door (sometimes written Durdle Dor) is a natural limestone arch on the Jurassic Coast near Lulworth in Dorset, England. It is privately owned by the Welds, a family who owns 12,000 acres (50 km2) in Dorset in the name of the Lulworth Estate. It is open to the public. The name Durdle is derived from the Old English 'thirl' meaning bore or drill.

The existence of the arch is due to the collision of continents and the birth of the Alps. One may see that the layers of rock exposed in the cliffs are tilting steeply to the north. This is most notable with Durdle Door itself as it is formed from a layer of hard limestone standing almost vertically out of the sea. Normally layers of limestone would be horizontal. Only the most fundamental force in geology could have altered these rocks in this way – plate tectonics.

Around 25 million years ago the African tectonic plate collided with the European plate. The huge pressures generated heaved and folded rocks to create the mountain chain we know as the Alps. Ripples from that collision spread north through the Earth’s crust and gently folded the rocks here, in what would become south Dorset and Purbeck. Durdle Door and Lulworth Cove lie in the heart of one of these folds, where the rock layers have been tilted steeply. As the sea broke through the hard limestone it washed away the softer rocks behind creating the arch, the cove and the beautiful coastline where Durdle Door and Lulworth Cove are both found.

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