วีดีโอ

Driving on the left side: I have a simple trick: My watch is on the left side... and I tell myself: Always drive where the watch is... it works surprisingly well 🙂

What caused these buildings to get into this state?

I look at these castles, and I feel like I've been there before, maybe in a past life, they've always intrigued me, it just feels like home.

Fantastic. I have been looking for a decent video of this area for ages as I stay in Dumbarton and Dunoon quite a lot and this hits the spot nicely. Very informative. I will be visiting the places that I haven't seen now.

Looks a fascinating part of the world.

somebody needs to inform me about the need to remove the roof portions of these relics to avoid taxation. That seems a bit shortsighted given the possibility to make these tourist destinations and even reuse them as places to stay. The roof of course insures that the building will degrade much faster.I get imagine that the family that owned the places would have had to keep paying taxes on the buildings if they were intact but it is sad that there is no overseeing mechanism by the state to preserve such buildings

Excellent videos, from a Wallace in Toronto Canada

As its Scotland add me as a new subscriber. Over 80 castles on my channel.

wow, hard to believe there's so many abandoned castles. i guess the upkeep costs were way too much to handle?

Home of my Campbell and Macintyre Ancestors 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Prime real estate...NOBODY in their right mind would abandon property like this on ANY terms-no matter the history,bloodshed,curses-devil be damned-no phuckn' way..the powers that be-the Oligarchs,wtvr,are hiding something...

The"official"narrative becomes more and more absurd with each 1 of these ruins observed-I mean to think nothing more than horse & buggy tech was used in the construction process is absurd at best- because- this is poured concrete my friends...wtf?

Hi, we've visited the palace yesterday at was very nice. Me and my family loved it. We've come all the way from Dubai and we're very blessed to have come across this palace ❤❤

The walls on the second one looked in quite good condition. I hope someone renovates it or any of the other ones. Hope for some future episode of Grand Designs 🙂

4:19 Galloway and The Borders are quite quiet.

Best time to visit the Highlands ? Pre-midge and post midge = April, May, September, October...

I am a proud American to say that my male Scottish family line has a 151 year life history with this Castle. My Scottish family lineage is Abernethy [a Sept of Clan Leslie].

I visited around 20 years ago... As a Maclean there is a separate visitor book to sign. I took one of my aunties with me. The family " nose" is definitely a trait 😉

What is this thing with taking roofs off to avoid taxes?

Hello my name is Connor McLean Brown and its so cool to see my history of a clan member my grandad grew up in glassgow and got married in the isle of mull and came to Australia where i grew up 👍

Lennox Castle : A lot has changed since Scotland closed its largest institution for people with learning disabilities 20 years ago but, for some, its shameful legacy lives on. Lennox Castle itself was built in the 1830s but it was not until a century later that it opened as Glasgow corporation's hospital for "mentally deficient" people. It sprawled over many acres of the Campsie foothills and had 20 separate blocks housing 60 men and women each, about 1,200 people in total - and the castle itself was converted into a nurses' home. When it opened in 1936, it was heralded as ahead of its time and the largest and best-equipped hospital of its kind in the UK. However, by the 1980s standards had deteriorated to the extent that a study by the British Medical Journal found residents to be dangerously underweight and malnourished. The hospital's medical director, Alasdair Sim, said in 1986 he had "never worked in a worse pit". It was during this time Hughie McIntyre was a confused teenager wondering what he had done to deserve being put into Lennox Castle. Hughie was adopted as a baby but later his adoptive parents sent him to Lennox Castle and he never saw them again. "I didn't know why I was there, or what I did to deserve this," he says. "No-one came to see me. I had no family or friends." Hughie says he had no idea how he would ever be let out of the hospital. I met Hughie and former mental health nurse Frances Brown at the ruins of Lennox Castle just before Christmas. The road doesn't take you all the way to the castle any more. It is a mile walk uphill, past Celtic FC's training ground into a high-walled driveway. Rounding the corner, Hughie got his first glimpse of the castle for 25 years. He stopped and held his head in his hands. "I was in there for 16 years," he says. "I lost the will to survive. It's scary coming back into this place. "I remembered my life in there. I was tortured: beaten, kicked, heavily punched and I had severe injuries. I get nightmares thinking about it." Hughie had little privacy in the hospital, and rules were strict. "They let you out, but you had to be back in the ward for eight o'clock at night," he says. "Then you've got to remain in your bed until the staff come on duty. And the staff don't tap you to wake you up, they grab the bottom of the bed and start bouncing the bed up and down to get you up. "When you're up, you stand at the bottom edge of the bed until you get a headcount. And if you're not in the ward, they'll go out looking for you." Hughie says he did run away but was caught and dragged back to the ward. "They kept hitting me and hitting me," he says. "I couldn't bear it." It was only once the hospital was in the process of being de-commissioned in the late 90s, Hughie found he had a shot at leaving. He met Frances Brown, a former mental health nurse, who had spent several weeks at Lennox Castle as part of her training. She says: "It was probably the worst experience of my professional career and probably my life. "I remember how badly it affected me. People were just not treated as human." During the late 90s, social care was in the process of a radical transformation. Institutions such as Lennox Castle were out of favour and care in the community was in. The Scottish government recognised that holding people in these large institutions was not helping the very people it was intended to. They had to close. Although care in the community was associated with an amount of scaremongering, its purpose was to listen to the needs of the person, and get what they needed to live as a member of their community. Years later, Frances returned to Lennox Castle to help in the decommissioning process. She says: "I'll never forget the day I came back, the cold sweat that came over me coming up the driveway again, just remembering all of that emotion and feelings and things I was feeling here, and I was the person who was able to go home at night." Dr Sam Smith was also involved in helping residents establish what they needed to move on from being an inpatient to being a productive part of society. She says: "I thought what we were doing when we were closing the hospital was not just helping those people who lived there move out, but we were also ensuring the other families and individuals didn't have places like Lennox Castle as the only choice available if things got difficult." NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde told the BBC that Lennox Castle was closed in April 2002 as it was recognised that institutional care it provided was "outdated and did not support a good quality of life". It said: "In the early 1990s the health board actively developed a resettlement programme with partner councils and support providers to ensure that people living in Lennox Castle were supported to live in their own homes in their own communities. "The health board funded housing associations to purchase suitable housing and transferred funds to local councils to provide the care and support needed." Dr Smith says the large institutions may have closed, but she feels there's still much to learn about how people with learning difficulties are supported. "We need to do better," she says. "All the potential lessons that could have been learned from the process of decommissioning the institutions haven't really been taken on board as well as they could. "We could do so much better than we are." Local authorities are still placing people with learning disabilities and autism in hospitals, and assessment/treatment centres that may not be in their area. Frances Brown says it is a form of institutionalised homelessness. "People are being evicted from their communities into these institutions, and having their lives taken away from them," she says. A 2018 report by the Scottish government found that more than 700 people with learning difficulties and autism were in out-of-area care. About 200 of them had been inpatients for more than a decade and another 70 had been in hospitals for more than five years. Frances says getting proper care for people with learning disabilities has been her life's work. "It's really sad we're still arguing and fighting every day to stop these things happening and help everybody lead a fulfilling life," she says. The ruins of Lennox Castle cast a haunting shadow on the landscape and our social history. Though the institution gone, its past remains deeply embedded in the memories of patients and staff brave enough to share their experiences to help shape a better future for social care. Thanks for the video. 👍

I have an ancestor that died in that castle 1664. I don’t know why. Her maiden name was Erskine. I am in America and my hobby is genealogy. Great video. Thanks.

Oh looking forward to watching this later back home!

Glad I found your channel. This video is so useful and engaging. I love the information you have clearly gone to a lot of effort finding and assembling for us. Giving locations is also appreciated as I might try flying over some of those too. Last but not least, magical drone flights showing the architecture off to best advantage. All nicely scripted. ATB Terry

Unfortunately as a Canadian I'm unable to hop in the car & go visit these magnificent destinations today, but I certainly wish I could. How fortunate you are to have such captivating history right along your own back door. I dearly hope to someday see these with my own eye, especially Dalquharran Castle & Dunalastair. I've just recently read about Sìth Chailleann, and it's actually just a stones throw from Dunalastair! Absolutely stunning shots you've captured here.

The internet needs isle of moy drone footage.

Thanks for sharing , so looking forward to exploring the Outer Hebrides with my caravan, meeting the community and like minded folks.🙏🙏

Interesting and well produced video. Though Kames Castle and Wester Kames Castle, on the Isle of Bute, are privately owned, and not open to the public (11.01 ). But I think you can rent a cottage in the grounds of Kames Castle. Not sure how you got access to them.

Great video ahead of my visit next week thank you 🙏👏

Francis Stewart, dear... Not Francis Bothwell.😉

I always need a poo when walking around places like these 😅

Where they abandoned... OR where the families sent to Australia to lead the colony and were written out of history. Every estate my ancestors occupied is abandoned or ruins while we today have no connection to an identity, no resources and no accommodation. Certainly an awful result of globalisation, patriarchy and capitalism.

I'm glad you mentioned Dere Street.

so sad what goverment taxes can do goverment shud b punished for thiss

I've always wanted to see the Outer Hebrides, and the Orkneys and the Shetlands. Other than vast sandy beaches, the landscape is identical to where I live, Newfoundland. I want to take a vacation to go somewhere that looks exactly like where I live...daft, I know... Great video. thanks for posting it.

Wish the untaxed rich would restore all these great old buildings.

Doo-ayersht. The difference between pronunciation...

My Ancestral Homeland

My parents were both parents in Scotland as were all my grandparents.I was born in Canada.Do i have an inherited right to uk citizenship?🇨🇦🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇬🇧

Visited castle Tioram twice in the last five years. I have also paddled around it. Tioram in Gaelic means dry. It’s very special and invokes a lot of thinking about the Gaels,their culture, language and lifestyle. It’s not an easy road to drive down to Dorlin from Acharacle as the road is single track and very twisty. I think that it should be restored as a home as the alternative is just another crumbling monument which Historic Scotland will state it doesn’t have money to maintain. A ground floor museum and perhaps venue for local schoolchildren to learn their history would be a good thing.

St. Conan? Yeah that mental image is not computing in my mind lol. Im picturing conan the barbarian in a pope hat.

The Viking "king" was Magnus Barelegs, if I'm not mistaken. I need to get back to both Arran and Bute

Passed on way to Tobermory, and again on way back to Oban , never entered its door.

Great show of castles that ive seen or been to over the years, thanks for the history. The story of the Good Sir James Douglas throwing Bruces heart into the midst of battle may only be a story but its a great one at that

Have read that Christina McRuari ( I hope I've got her name right) and Robert the Bruce were great friends and any time he needed help she was there for him , I don't know if they were lovers , but I'm sure he was more than happy to have her support when he needed it

Its the architecture style of the building i like more than what goes into it. The history of the place who it was built for all facinates me . Thanks for taking us around those left to die buildings otherwise some of us might never see them or even know they are there.

My mother is a McLean, my father, a Kerr.

Wonderful video thank you .

I’m a Macdonald Maclean and every man on my father’s side of the family bares the name, as far back as we can trace! Hoping to visit Duart Castle next summer! We think our lineage stems from the marriage (or kidnap) of Mary Macdonald

Me. Tope con este canal y lo encuentro genial tienen que un lindo país con mucha historia y lugares para muy intrigantes un saludo desde el chile