Waiting for Caitriona

Outlander – A Fan’s Encounter with Filming!

On Wednesday, April 2, one of Outlander’s biggest fans went on a fantastic adventure with several of her friends. Sinead Robertson, known to those on Twitter as @jesuisprestnow, sent us this report.

I’m Sinead Robertson, an Irish lass  from Dublin. I came to Inverness as a horticultural student in 1995 on placement. I met my Scottish husband-to-be, and so nearly twenty years later I’m still loving living in Inverness.

I first read Cross Stitch (Outlander) about nine years ago when it was recommended by a friend, and loved it. So like all Outlander fans, I was thrilled when I saw a video of Diana announcing that it was going to be made into a TV series, and started to follow every hint of who was going to play the roles of Jamie and Claire.

I loved Sam straight away – he was Jamie Fraser. I was lucky enough to meet Sam when he came to Inverness, I was a little responsible for this coming about ! I had talked with the Cinema Programmer in Eden Court, a local movie theatre, and I persuaded him to screen Emulsion (Sam’s most recent film)  and try get to  Sam come in person to do a Q&A . I couldn’t believe that this worked out and lot of fans came to Inverness to meet him, which was just wonderful – he gave so much time to each and every fan that was there.

The Emulsion weekend was amazing and not just because of Sam – I met more fantastic Outlander fans with whom I’ve formed a great friendship.

emulsion event

Some of the fans have been on set a few times at Doune Castle and Blackness Castle, and some finally got to meet Sam and Caitriona near Sterling University last week. I was very envious of them – having met Sam, I really wanted to meet Caitriona. We knew that the Outlander crew were coming up to the Newtonmore area for a while as we’d seen the call for extras in the area (I did apply but never heard anything back) so we planned to go to that area on Wednesday April 2nd and see if we could met anyone.

I picked up the other two Inverness Outlanders, Joni and Lisa, and I drove to Newtonmore where we there to meet up with Jackie, Stephanie, Tash, Simone and Emma. We arrived at the Highland Folk Museum but were disappointed to discover that there was no filming going on there that day. But we didn’t give up – we asked around and heard that they might be filming in Aviemore, so we backtracked to Aviemore and again asked around, did anyone know where the filming was happening, and someone mentioned that there was some arrows pointing the directions to the location, so we followed the arrows down a single track dirt road for a good few miles not knowing where we were going to end up  but the scenery around us was stunning , we finally spotted  base camp.

4-1-14 jamie

The security were surprised to see us there in the middle of nowhere but the weather was fantastic, so we sat down had coffee and waited. We could see that they were filming off in the distance through a forest and because of the ‘right to roam’ law in Scotland, we could have gone but we would never push it and were happy to sit, wait and hope that Caitriona would stop when she came back for her lunch. The weather was so nice and the scenery around us so beautiful that waiting was a lovely way to spend the afternoon.

We had all brought food for the cast and crew, but Joni had cooked up a storm baking gluten free carrot cake muffins with cream cheese icing, banana bread muffins with brown sugar icing, peanut butter cookies (plain), peanut butter & jam cookies, peanut butter banoffee cookies, peanut butter & jam pastry swirls, and fruit & nut pastry swirls. Everything besides the pastry swirls were gluten-free & wheat free.

When Caitriona did come back for her lunch she waved to us from the car and I missed it! The Security gave us a hard time saying some fans we were!

We asked the drivers and security if they would bring the food down to Caitriona and the crew they obliged , came back saying Caitriona was  were delighted – and then we waited and hoped that they would come chat with us on the way back to filming.

drivers

About half an hour later Maril (Davis) and Matt (Roberts) drove up and stopped and got out to speak to us. They were so nice , were surprised at us finding them and thanked us for all the baking. They said that they were really tight on time filming that day so they couldn’t spend much time with us. Matt took a photo of us all with Maril. We were all so grateful to them for taking the time to speak to us.

It was a few minutes later when Caitriona came up the road. She stopped and got out of the car, and was delighted that some of us were wearing Caitriots t-shirts. She gave me a hug and asked whereabouts  in Ireland I was from. She spent a little time with all of us  and was genuinely pleased to see us.  She was so beautiful to see up close and her costume was amazing! She had to rush away as the clock was ticking and the  filming schedule was tight, but just as the car was about to pull off, Jackie remembered that we hadn’t got anything signed. So we quickly asked would she mind signing something for us which she did no problem. Caitriona was so lovely and  her  beautiful  personality shone! We are honestly so lucky to have both Sam and Caitriona as our favourite characters in our favourite books! I’m so proud to be an Outlander fan.

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