Cover photo: Looking out over Loch Ness from Urquhart Castle

     Arriving somewhere new on a trip after dark has it’s pros and cons. The downside is that you miss some pretty sights

along the way that just aren’t fully comprehended with headlights. The upside to me is that when you open your eyes in the morning, BAM! Something totally new suddenly hits all your senses and you realize you are surrounded by a new beauty and experience in life.

      Being a Southwestern Pennsylvania native, I compare it to the feeling you get when you drive through the Fort Pitt tunnel coming into Pittsburgh at night, then wow! You go from a boring concrete wall drive into a kaleidoscope of city lights, with the three rivers area full of bridges, skyscrapers, boats, stadiums, and inclined planes all lit up. That’s how I felt when I stepped outside our accommodations in Inverness,  the Lochardil House Hotel, only it wasn’t the city lights, but the beautiful stately homes amidst natural surroundings sloping down towards the River Ness that wooed me.

      Before breakfast I took a stroll around the neighborhood.  I found a small street that turned suddenly into just a path, but  leading down towards the River Ness. Then I  came back up again on another lane that followed the curve of the hill past lovely homes with garden walls.

       The birds were up too, and busy in their morning routine.  I even saw a “lifebird”, a Long-tailed Tit. There are a good bit of similar named birds in Europe, so go ahead, laugh now if you must, you’ll probably hear me tell of more soon.In birders lingo, “lifebird” means a bird you’ve never seen or heard before in your life. This one is my 477th lifebird species. Just a few more to go to reach the current number of  bird species recorded for the world on Ebird, 10,366!

   After my brisk stroll, which worked up my appetite, Savannah and I were treated to a very elegant breakfast at Lochardil House.  The host took our orders for breakfast, which are included in the lodging rate. Don’t make the same mistake I made the first day here in Scotland. At our first lodging place, they had a buffet breakfast and the waitress also brought a menu to order from. Thinking that the buffet was plenty for me, I declined to order anything, but Savannah ordered a cooked meal.  Only to find out that the cooked meals from the menus were part of the included free breakfast! I didn’t make that mistake twice. Which was a good thing, because the meal here was incredible! See those

kippers on my plate? That’s only half the order – I had to split it with Savannah because I had no idea they would bring me an entire large plate full of fish, with the other items on another fully loaded dish. I loved though, that we never ate lunch the whole time we were there, because each “full Scottish breakfast” carried us through to supper, as they were originally designed to do for farmhands and such in times past.

Now, I haven’t even started telling about the reason we came to Inverness, to tour Loch Ness and the Urquhart Castle there. So it’s always a plus when the accommodations  are one of the best parts of the stay! But I’ve found that to be true in Great Britian, especially in old manor houses or country house-style hotels like this.

LOCH NESS AND THE URQUHART CASTLE

    You would think Loch Ness, with its famous suspected inhabitant, to be touristy and overrated, but you’d be wrong.  It’s an incredibly large beautiful loch, or lake, and it holds

more water than all the other lakes in England, Scotland and Wales put together.  As part of the Caledonian Canal, you can travel it and other connected lochs the whole way from Inverness in the North down through the “Great Glen, (or Glen Mor in Gaelic) to Fort Williams in the south. What a holiday that would be – to travel by kayak through the Great Glen on the Great Glen Canoe Trail! I’m saving the link here for my wanderlust to do list (and if you want to look also) :

http://greatglencanoetrail.info/

     For our adventure of the day, we decided to take the one hour boat tour that departs from the area north of the Urquhart Castle along the Western shore and goes just past the castle and back. There are longer tours that allow you to disembark from the boat and tour the castle and return by boat, but since we had a vehicle, we decided to just use the boat ride to see the lake and castle from the water, then tour the castle on our own time, and we were very happy with that arrangement.

 Not only does the boat tour give you terrific views of the castle and loch, but the historic narration as you ride was enjoyable as well. The guide spoke of Nessie, the Loch Ness monster, in an impartial manner, pleasing sceptics and believers alike. The most interesting tidbit to me was the account of the racing boat incident from the 1950’s. Before telling the tale, let me say that it was explained to us that with the extreme depth of the loch, it makes the surface react different from other shallower bodies of water, it makes for some strange waves and I did witness that when I

stood overlooking the loch from Urquhart castle.  Knowing that, you can better understand this event: In 1952 John Cobb was trying to set a world record for water speed, but was killed when his jet boat hit a mysterious patch of ripples at high speed. Since the loch was otherwise calm at the time, this resulted in new stories of the Loch Ness monster. The Urquhart Castle is situated at the deepest part of the lake, where most of the supposed sightings of Nessy take place, so as you tour the castle maybe you will either experience a sighting of those strange waves, as I did, or…..who knows what else?  (But you should probably restrain yourself from trying to set a water speed record there.)

   The Urquhart Castle is in a gorgeous setting, and it has a museum, shop, and dining facility. Even the view from the parking lot high on the hill was spectacular and served to whet your  appetite for the visit.

The castle was once one of Scotland’s largest, but it has seen great turmoil during its 500 years as a fortress.  The last of the government troops that were here in 1692 were paid to blow it up upon leaving the castle so as to prevent the Jacobites being able to make any use of it.  Thankfully the ruins remain, enough to allow you to climb to the top of the Grant tower, with its superior views of the loch,  and then to sink in your spirit to a much less joyful site, the prison cell which is reported to have kept a famous Gaelic bard, Domhnall Donn.

Many other parts of the buildings remain, including one of my favorites, the remains of the  “doocot”.  Mentioned in the Bible as dovecotes ( Isaiah 60:8), it was a beehive shaped structure that was employed to provide nesting boxes, or pigeonholes.  The pigeons’ eggs were collected and the pigeons themselves provided meat for the castle inhabitants during harsh winters.

 One of the many museum displays is a 17th century Highland Targe, which is a wooden shield covered in leather and brass studs.

 Other favorite displays of mine there were the ones of a long bow and it’s arrows and also the display of a harp, or clarsach.

 

 

      Another item at the castle not to be missed is the full-sized, working trebuchet, or stone-throwing machine. You’d probably have to be led up to the castle blindfolded to miss it, actually. It’s a large structure set in the curve of the path leading from the entrance to the castle ruins. Think of it as a slingshot on steroids. It’s huge, and I’d hate to be anywhere near a stones-throw away from its projectile path!  It was surely a very powerful weapon in its time!

 

     Returning to Inverness for supper, we were treated to what looked like a whole new town, the River Ness was all lit up, even the castle gained a spectacular glory with it’s new outfit of illumination! Our meal was at Johnny Foxes, and what a grand meal it was – just the description makes my mouth water in the memory of it:

Pan Fried Salmon

Fillet served with

Smoked Haddock

and Curried Rice

Balls, Roast Peppers

and Courgette in a

Creamy Dill Sauce.

      I’ll admit that I had to look up “courgette.” What a superb word the British have for it –  somehow it’s french name transforms it from the picture in your mind of a neighbor bringing a bagful of unwanted, overgrown zucchinis, or worse yet, you trying to give away yours, into a lovely little French vegetable served by a chef  in a…..well, in a creamy dill sauce.  (It’s zucchini). I’m going to have to part ways with Shakespeare here, I think a rose by any other name, like say …zucchini, would not seem as alluring.

     My drink was one of the Crabbie’s Ginger beers, this time Raspberry. They are made in Edinburg, Scotland. I am a huge fan of them. I first had one on the West Coast of the US and haven’t stopped stocking my fridge with them since, but I now know that the Raspberry one is not my fav. The original and orange spice flavors are the best though: a must try!

     We finished our day with a twilight drive over the Northwest Mountain range on the A87 route. I felt like the spectacle instead of the spectator as we passed what seemed like between  50 to 100 deer standing by the roadside along the way. I pictured them cheering us on, and commenting to each other, “Must be an outsider, foolish enough to travel through here at night.”   We made it over the mountains unscathed and were driving down along the lochs approaching the Isle of Skye when we saw a castle of any princess’s dreams, all aglow in lights. But I’ll tell of that in my next post.

GALLERY