Bannockburn Heritage Centre

Our original plan with the inlaws for today was to have a wander round a nearby country park, but it was a bit wet and cold so we opted for somewhere closer and indoors instead. And it's just as well we did - despite living in Stirling nearly a year now (will be a year at the end of the week) we hadn't managed to visit the Bannockburn Heritage Centre, and discovered when we got there that it is closing down on Wednesday and will be demolished in a couple of weeks, ready for a brand new shiny heritage centre to open behind it at some point in 2014. So this building won't be here much longer, and is destined to become a car park.

The displays inside were interesting, although I did give myself a headache trying on the headpiece of a suit of armour - that stuff is seriously heavy! And I enjoyed the newspaper clipping from 2002 about how Uri Geller was going to fly over the area in a helicopter in order to identify the precise site of the battle (which is rather disputed). In order to prepare he was going to 'watch "Braveheart" to get in touch with the "colours, the atmosphere and the scenery" of the 700 year old skirmish." With beautiful understatement, the clipping ended with this great quote: "Stirling historian Craig Mair laughed: "I don't know what he's going to learn from Braveheart. It's about William Wallace not Robert the Bruce"."