River Tay

I've been doing the family tree and my father's side of the family goes back to the Angus Glens for at least 300 years.

They're all buried in Kenmore, which is a beautiful point at the end of Loch Tay, which runs into the River Tay.

And they're buried next to the infant son of the Maharaja, Duleep Singh, as it turns out.

And...

It was one of Scotland's principal royal centres.

The River Tay, the longest river in Scotland, ran past the city.

Scone, the traditional coronation site of the Scottish kings, was nearby.

And the North Inch itself was a large open area, perfect for a spectacle.

It's a cross between a blackberry and a red raspberry.

And it's named after the River Tay in Scotland.

Oh, I didn't know that bit.

Cool.

Now, the barge, to accommodate lifting an iron plate, Inside, we put a big massive pontoon on the side, and I'll put up a photograph of it.

It's actually sunk now, it's sitting just off Galdry and the River Tay.

It always reminds me of Boyle's Law, you know, how they calculated that weight lift.

with adding this boy on the side to compensate for the weight, to be able to lift the weight up and into the hold.

You were dependent on swell.

You couldn't lift 12 tonnes of steel in a swell, and you really needed decent weather to lift.

So you can imagine the River Tay itself, until you got into pretty much good summer, that's when you had good weather.

And from Tayport Harbour, it's where we were based, it would take us about two hours with towing the barge to get out to the Bell Rock.

Another layer of complexity comes from the interactions with the Brythonic kingdoms to the west and north.

The Welsh kingdoms like Gwynedd and Deheubarth had their own rivalries, often colliding with Anglo-Saxon expansion, while Northumbrian influence reached into southern Scotland as far north as the River Tay, creating an early version of a border zone.

These contacts involved trade, intermarriage, and even joint military campaigns against Viking invaders.

The boundary between English and Welsh was porous and constantly renegotiated in practice.

The sailors claimed to have seen Thule on the horizon, which was probably Shetland, and it's the furthest north the Roman state ever laid eyes on anything.

To hold the ground, work began on a full legionary fortress on the River Tay near modern Blair Gowrie in Perthshire on a site called Inchtuthil.

It covered about 21 hectares, enough for the entire 20th Legion, roughly 5,500 men, with 64 barrack blocks.

It was the most northerly fortress of its kind Rome ever built, and it was never finished because the political calculus changed.