Note from Susan: If you have been following DesignDestinations, you know that Sheryl has been posting about her experience in Scotland last summer.
In this post, she includes some of the places she and her husband Jim visited when they specifically toured sites related to the novel and TV show Outlander.
By Sheryl A. Jurries
A good place to get started on the “Outlander” tour would be to visit a circle of standing stones. It was through one of these stones that Claire fell through time from 1945 to 1743 Inverness. This circle of stones is located very close to Inverness, which was the inspiration for Diana Gabaldon’s imaginative world of time travel. We are in Clava Cairns. There are many circles of stones located throughout the world, including the US.
After Diana wrote “Outlander,” she hired Inverness Custom Tours to transport her around Scotland for research. I hired the same tour company to take us tor a total of 7 days around Scotland. Our guide, Laura Moon, told us Diana said that the circle of stones at Clava Cairns near Inverness was exactly what she envisioned when she wrote her first book.
The Clachan Duich cemetery was an inspiration to Diana. It was ancient and felt eerie and beautiful. I can see why she was inspired to weave a bit of magic into her stories.
Claire nearly bought the vase that was in the window of this shop. The producers made some changes to some of these buildings to better represent the storyline. If you remember, Claire wonders how her life would’ve changed if she had purchased that vase.
This is the Tibbermore Church in Perth. This church, depicted as Crainsmuir Church, is the filming location of the witch trials of Geillis Duncan and Claire.
This is the Culloden Battlefield near Inverness, the site of a short but fierce 1-hour battle on April 16, 1746. On one side was the Jacobite army, determined to reclaim the throne of Scotland and England for Bonnie Prince Charles Edward Stuart. On the other was the British government’s Redcoats, equally determined to squash them. The British killed more than 1,250 Jacobites and ended the attempt to restore a Stuart to the throne of England and Scotland.
It was the last full-scale Jacobite battle on British soil. Surprisingly, not all Jacobites were Highlanders. One third were from the Scottish Lowlands, France, Ireland, and England.
The battle set clan against clan and divided families, including sons against fathers, husbands against wives, and brother against brother. Also many of the clans supported the British government and not the Jacobites.
The repercussions of this battle was felt for many generations. In the aftermath, the clan system was dismantled which began the Highland Clearances, with many people forced from their lands and into places like the Colonies, Canada, and Australia.
Sheryl Arredondo Jurries is a former magazine editor and newspaper reporter. She has 2 children, 2 stepchildren, and a granddaughter. She had her husband Jim reside in Holland, Michigan.
