Rosslyn Chapel and Back to School

Flashback to Late September/Early October:

After returning home from Copenhagen and Stockholm I started classes.

The semester consisted of two different courses.  Veterinary Public Health, which involved a lot of information about slaughter safety and welfare as well as public health safety regarding meat and infectious disease that can be spread from animal to humans.  My second course was farm animal medicine.  That course covered all medicine and surgery for cows, sheep, pigs, poultry and even fish. For those of you that know me, while I really do like cows and did enjoy my lambing experience with sheep, farm animal medicine and veterinary public health are definitely not my two favourite subjects!

My parents got back from Islay at the same time I got back from Stockholm.  On my second day of classes I had a big gap so we decided to go to the Rosslyn Chapel which is about a mile away from campus.  For anyone who is a Dan Brown fan or has seen the movie the Da Vinci Code you may know that the Rosslyn Chapel is featured in the book and is used as a filming location in the movie (I haven't seen the movie but I feel like I should watch it to see the Rosslyn Chapel portrayed in film).

The construction for the chapel started in 1456.  The chapel was meant to be cruciform in shape but only the choir, the lady chapel and the crypt (built at an earlier date) were ever completed.  The chapel was abandoned and left in disrepair.  In the 1650s Oliver Cromwell's troops used the chapel as a horse stable.  However restorations started with Queen Victoria when she visited the chapel and thought it was astoundingly beautiful.  After many years of restorations (and restoring damages made by early restorations) the chapel is the way it stands now.  Made of sandstone the intricate carvings on the inside of the chapel are amazing (unfortunately you aren't allow to take pictures of the inside).

Details on the window give only a tiny insight into the intricacies of the carvings inside.

The semester started off pretty well until early October when I managed to break my finger playing field hockey.  My finger got pinched between two sticks and I managed to fracture two bones and crack a third.  I got incredibly lucky in the sense that my semester was somewhat front loaded in terms of practicals so I never had to try and work with a cow with my broken finger.

One week after the break - still some nice bruising around the knuckle
(but this is very faded compared to what it was originally!)