Castles, palaces and ruins

Every year for St Andrew's Day, Historic Scotland offers free admission to sites across Scotland. My folks and I have been for the past couple of years:

2012: Edinburgh Castle
2013: Tantallon Castle & Dirleton Castle

This year we visited Craigmillar Castle and Linlithgow Palace. Craigmillar Castle is only 3 miles from my house, and on one of my 10 mile running routes, but I'd never even seen it, let alone been in it.

It really is a fantastic opportunity, but there didn't seem to be a lot of people at either site. All the better for us really. We had a fabulous day exploring!

These were my favourite 3 shots of the day - all taken at Linlithgow Palace. And yet, I do believe I preferred Craigmillar Castle. I'm refining my exploring preferences all the time - for me, it needs to be a ruin, it needs to be remote, it needs to be wild, it needs stone spiral staircases and it needs to be small. I'm not asking for much am I?