Time is precious, spend it wisely.

This is the first post on my new blog, all about adventures in time travel, otherwise known as historical re-enactment in Scotland and beyond. The disclaimer first: I’m not a historian. I was rubbish at remembering dates (and facts to be honest), so I did science. This is my blog on discovering historic re-enactment for non-history experts and learning about it on the way. In 2 years I’m officially multiperiod now, dabbling in the 17th century, but mainly covering the Jacobite Rebellion 1745-16, with a dash of smugglers in the Early Napoleonic, and World War II home front.

Expect history, landscape, sewing, cooking, science, the odd watercolour and pony post (because they always creep in somehow) and we only stay in castles, so there may be some adventures too.

My interest in the Jacobite history began when I was training to be a primary school teacher. I realised that although I had an interest in history and had visited so many beautiful historic sites in Scotland, my formal history studies in school had not included anything before the industrial revolution. I was sketchy about what chronological order Mary Queen of Scots, Robert the Bruce and Bonnie Prince Charlie actually came in a timeline so decided to take an elective class on Scotland Past and Place (the trendy term for history and geography at the time). It was a great course featuring the Jacobites (and post landscapes) and now armed with historical skills required for a 3-12 year old (and a timeline of Scotland’s history), my adventures into the past began, armed with reference material of varying heft.

One wet holiday in Crieff, Perthshire, when I’d abandoned ideas of a profession in teaching and was going to be a scientist and make the work a better place, when wet welly-boot walks and all reading material was exhausted we were down to our final supplies of the chalet’s sparse selection of reading material from charity sales and left behind of sudoko puzzles, a hard back on fly fishing and a tartan bodice ripper. My brother got to the fly fishing book first, my sister the sudoko, so in desperation I started to flick through “Dragonfly in Amber” by Diana Gabaldon. It had a cover and blurb that made be balk, it looked like the worst of tartan tat, but there was absolutely nothing else for it… I was rather transported to familiar Jacobite historical and geographical stomping grounds in Scotland (and Paris) that I’d often visited, and just studied in my elective. The writing was rather better than I’d anticipated and I was utterly seduced by the landscape. That “Dragonfly in Amber” paperback did not stay in Crieff, but came home to Aberdeen, where I read the precursor “Cross Stitch” (when “Outlander” was published under a different title in the UK.

I have to say, that I started to get into Scottish history as I travelled around, dotting around like a butterfly, with no real direction and flitting where ever I fancied. I didn’t become a teacher but went back to do another post-grad, getting my masters in Environmental Science. As a biologist, I adore the natural world and love being outdoors, discovering the stories that are written in the landscape, from the epochs old tales of the geology and geography, to the complex shifting ecosystems above them, to our own human story played out in those landscapes. It was the Jacobite history that really caught my imagination, but I had no idea where that would lead.

.