Famille Du Pentium

OK first some family history – my grandmother’s mother’s maiden name was Maxwell.  From our records, we’ve determined that her family goes back to David Maxwell, who was born in Glasgow in the 19th century and moved to Champagne, Illinois sometime later.  David was one of the sons of the Honorable Joseph Maxwell, who was in turn the son of the 11th Baron of Herries, Marmaduke Constable Maxwell.   The lineage from Marmaduke Constable Maxwell traces back somewhat directly to Maccus, a Norse chief, and his son John Maxwell, who was Chamberlain of Scotland in the 13th century.

These Maxwells built and lived in several castles in lowland Scotland until the 17th century, two of which we visited during our British Isles cruise: Caerlaverock Castle in Dumfries and Newark Castle near Glasgow.  We, of course, took lots of pictures and I’ll walk you through them now.  If you open that link in a new tab or separate window, you can refer to this guide while viewing the pictures.

The first 16 pictures, through DSC03396, are from our trip from Glasgow to Dumfries, which is about 3 hours.  From there, you have the old Caerlaverock castle gate, and at DSC03400 your first view of the castle itself.  The rest are pictures from inside and around the castle, and of course the kids, up to about DSC03440 where we start making our way from Dumfries back to Glasgow to visit Newark Castle.  Mostly what you see is the countryside between Dumfries and Glasgow.

At DSC03453, we arrive at Newark Castle and start making our way around it.

The “DSCxxxxx” series pictures are from my point-and-shoot Sony; the following pictures starting with IMAG0001 are from Marla’s camera and so they repeat starting back at Caerlaverock and then moving forward to Newark.  I also took 35MM pictures with film and some long and wide lenses; I’ll post those once they are processed.

Our excursion was arranged in advance with a private tour guide and coach company, and everything was great.  The staff at Caerlaverock had been alerted to our arrival by our tour guide and treated us like royalty.  The tea room had a great lunch menu, and I even tried the haggis sandwich.  Then, we had to make our way back through Glasgow to Greenock, where our boat was docked.