Where is it?
Culloden Battlefield - once known as Drumossie Moor - and its visitor centre, between Inverness and Inverness Airport.
Why do you go there?
I know no place like it. Like many other visitors, I want to pay my respects to those who were named by the English “Jacobite vermin” and a “rabble”, and who fought and died here in the last pitched battle on British soil on April 16, 1746.
When I walk the battlefield, I also reflect upon the remarkable reputation the Highland soldier won only a decade later, fighting for the Crown in the Seven Years’ War.
How often do you go?
I often visit family on the other side of Inverness and like to see what’s new in the superb National Trust for Scotland visitor centre and museum at Culloden.
Attention is paid equally to the battle strategies of Government and Jacobite command, and to the experiences of officers and men on both sides. The 360-degree battle immersion theatre is a favourite of mine. Musket balls and swords recovered from the moor recall the fury of that April day.
How did you discover it?
I grew up between London and Beauly. We used to go to the battlefield on family outings. It was then bleak moorland, much of it bog, with only a 19th-century cairn and memorial stones, rather lost in the heather, to remember the dead of the different clans who fell on the day.
Although visits to Culloden were atmospheric then, the blue and red pennants on the battlefield today to mark the Jacobite and Government lines make a very helpful and informative addition to the site.
What’s your favourite memory?
My father would gather us as children around the memorial stone marked “Clan Fraser”. Once we’d charged against imaginary Redcoats with suitable vigour, we would then change country and era and crawl on our stomachs through the heather in imitation of Lovat Scouts in the Second Boer War.
Barely discernible on the moor then, the “Clan Fraser” stone has more recently been a place of pilgrimage for Outlander fans, bearing flowers. This followed the screening of series two, when the character Claire visited the memorial to honour her fictional dead.
The stone is now visible from afar, having been recently cordoned off to allow the ground to recover from heavy footfall over the past few years.
Who do you take?
Just as my father took us, I have taken my children and hope to take my grandchildren when they’re older. It’s a terrific day out, and the visitor centre is handy, when it rains.
What do you take?
All-weather clothing. On the day of combat in April 1746, snow and hail “started falling very thick”. Rain then came on but by early afternoon, when battle commenced, it had stopped. Nothing’s changed.
What do you leave behind?
Memories of that blood-soaked day, which presaged a transformed Scotland.
Sum it up in five words.
Historic. Emotive. Mournful. Inspirational. Educative.
What other travel spot is on your wish list?
St Kilda. An intrepid 18th-century visitor wrote of “the ordinary landing place” being “nothing else than a solid rock, sloping gradually down to the bottom of the sea, and all overgrown with Lichen Marinus, or the plant commonly called Laver in England”. I know it’s a bit easier to access now, but it will still be an adventure.
Pretty Young Rebel: The Life of Flora Macdonald by Flora Fraser (Bloomsbury, £10.99), is out now in paperback
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