Hey Ewe! Got Wool?

A few days ago Paul and I went out to Edinburgh to go to the tartan factory right near the castle because we had been there six years ago and we thought how great it was to stand on the balcony and watch all the machines making tartan. They made all types of tartan there and you could go through their catalog of clans and family names to find the appropriate tartan you were looking for. Well, when we got there we were sorely disappointed that the place had been turned into a tourist trap! To get inside you had to walk through the main gift shop full of stuffed animals, postcards, books, cheap kilts, and t-shirts with ridiculous slogans on them. Then you entered what was the factory balcony taking you down to what was the factory floor going through about five different gift shops selling all sorts of different "scottish" trinkets for your "scottish experience" including the selection of clothing made out of Princess Diana Memorial Tartan.

On the old factory floor there were individual shops with inflated prices of tartan ordered in from factories elsewhere. Most of the kilts being sold were made by machine and they were also selling cheap polyester kilts and material. In one of the shops down there I caught a girl sewing her own tag onto a scarf from a pile of neatly folded scarves that looked like she ordered them from somewhere and just took them out of a box, so now she's going to pretend she made them and sew her own tags to them (I'm not sure if that's what it was but it gave me that impression and the way it's turned out there now, I wouldn't put it past them). Then you could get a picture done of you and your family wearing scottish dress up clothes, only fourty pounds for two pictures!!! You may ask, do they still even make tartan there anymore? The answer is yes, there was one man watching one machine working in what looked like a basement where tourists could look down and watch. I kind of liked the little set up they had that showed kilts through the years, the picture above is me next to Bonnie Prince Charlie and a few highlanders, I found it kind of funny.
In fact, the best place we went to in Edinburgh was St. Giles Cathedral, the workmanship on everything in the place was amazing. It was also nice because it was a free place to go to out of the rain that wasn't some gift shop. I also noticed that everywhere there that said "woolen factory" wasn't a factory and didn't sell wool yarn or knew where to get any.
We figured we would go to the whisky distillery but found out it wasn't a distillery it was a gift shop with a "whisky experience" ride, there was no whisky tasting but they sold an assortment of whisky (You can get the same kinds of whisky at ASDA for so much cheaper by the way). They even had the cheesy picture on the wall of someone meant to look like a whisky connoisseur and every so often the man in the picture moved and fixed his moustache.
If this is what they've done to the Royal Mile of Edinburgh I can't imagine what they've done to the castle, the whole place is a terrible tourist trap reminiscent of Disneyland.

So we decided we were going to go on a small trip out to Selkirk to check out the tartan factories out there, we hoped tourists haven't destroyed that place as well. The drive was remote and absolutely gorgeous. We went through valleys on small country roads and passed by Grey Mare's Trail (the trail that inspired Sir Walter Scott's writing). We stopped and went for a walk up to see the waterfall. I could spend an entire day up there with the water and the heather and the sheep, it was so peaceful.
When we got to Selkirk we went to one of the factories that Paul got his tartan from for the kilt he is making right now. We found out that their shop and cafe was open, but they weren't doing tours of the factory that day. So we took a good look around and found a couple of places we didn't know supplied tartan but also weren't open.

We weren't too disappointed because there were little museums to go into, like Sir Walter Scott's courthouse museum and the museum at the visitor centre that showed what life would have been living there and touched a bit on the history of the border wars with England. There was an old kirk behind the museum where William Wallace was proclaimed protector of Scotland.
Anyway, on our way back home we stopped at a small cafe in the country just outside Selkirk. We went to have our drinks outside because it was a nice day and there were fields full of sheep all around us. We had been wondering what happens to all the wool after the sheep get sheered, and at that time a farmer came out with a truckload of more sheep to put into the field so Paul went up to him and asked. The farmer thought it was a bit funny that we would ask because just two weeks ago he had a barn full and had pretty much gave it away to be sold to the factories, but he had some wool left from two sheep. One is from a white faced sheep and the other is from a black faced sheep.

This all filled a huge bag that he gave to us for free. Lets just say, I have a lot of work ahead of me cleaning all the wool, but I couldn't be happier.