Houn's Journal: LOCH NESS: CURSE OF THE DISNEY MONSTER

Our B&B host in Nairn is a retired RAF officer who does a brisk business renting to flyboys who land at a nearby base. He’s also a pretty darn good breakfast cook, including smoked salmon on toast. One of the big reasons I like B&B’s is eating in pleasant surroundings and, of course, the food; on this trip it ranged from very good to excellent.

Our destination this day was Loch Ness, perhaps Scotland’s most famous locale. Ever mindful of “local knowledge,” we took our host’s advice to tour it clockwise, starting down the south side as it would be less crowded. Well, it certainly was that, perhaps because you couldn’t see anything! Virtually the entire 23-mile length was like driving in a plant tunnel. The occasional pull-out for a view wasn’t particularly inspiring, no matter how artsy-craftsy I tried to get.

Desperate to see anything, we stopped at the Falls of Foyers, called by one hiking guide as “the must see sight of South Loch Ness.” Well, maybe after a winter storm or something. You have to hike way down a lot of stone steps to get to a viewpoint of the upper falls, which supposedly cascade 140 feet. When we reached it, there was just a trickle of water coming down which didn’t even make a good photo. We didn’t bother descending the rest of the way down to the base to view whatever the lower half looked like. The best part of the excursion was the stones engraved with bits from a 1787 poem about the Falls by Robert Burns, sort of a Scottish version of Burma Shave signs.

We finally got to the bottom of the Loch and the town of Fort Augustus, which is the site of five locks of the 60 mile long Caledonian Canal and lock system, built by Thomas Telford in the early 1800s. The Canal stretches from Fort William to Inverness, and is linked by a series of natural lochs and the River Oich. The locks here bring the boats down onto Lock Ness. This was rather fascinating to watch, especially given that all this mechanism is 200+ years old. There was a variety of pleasure and working craft waiting to make the trip up or down.

Below, left, is a view of the entrance to the top of the locks, and below, right is a shot from the top looking down towards Loch Ness, the body of water in the distance.

Fort Augustus is really a pretty little town, but doesn’t encompass a lot more than you see in the above photo. It definitely caters to tourists.
Now, one of things everyone must do in Scotland is to try haggis. I don’t know about you, but I always envisioned the stuff as some sort of stew that was boiled in a sheep’s stomach. Not even close. It’s actually a mixture of lamb innards and oats, made into a large sausage-like affair that is then sliced into disks that are fried or grilled. I couldn’t resist trying some from the local butcher that boasted they made their own. A haggis burger! All riiiiiight!

I really liked it. Sort of a cross between a veggie burger and a hamburger. I fearlessly ate haggis through the rest of our time in Scotland, but none was as good as this one.
After Fort Augustus, we drove up the north side of the Loch, and the viewing wasn’t much better than on the south side. But we were headed for the ruins of Urquhart Castle.

A stronghold since 500 AD, it was expanded to an early castle in the 1200’s, then to a full castle in the 1300’s. Seized after Edward I's invasion of Scotland, it was reclaimed by Robert the Bruce in the 14th century. It was repeatedly attacked during the 15th and 16th centuries by the MacDonald Lords of the Isles, and was pretty much wiped out when they took everything of value right down to the locks on the doors.

By the 1600's the castle was abandoned to the people of the Glen, who proceeded to dismantle masonry and remove stones to build their own houses. Finally, in 1689 when the last Stewart King, James II of England and VII of Scotland, was exiled, one Captain Grant and 300 Highlanders saw off a force of James's supporters. The garrison left the ruins in 1692, and the castle was not repaired. It was left pretty much like this:

Reverse view from the tower:

Today, however, it was attacked by hordes of bus-and-boat tourists from, as we found out later, a Disney cruise ship docked at Edinburgh. I’m showing only the ones that came via a Loch tour boat; the great majority piled off of ten buses, dwarfing the car travelers.

Thank goodness we hit the bathrooms before they arrived. The one good thing about the masses was they clogged the gift shop so badly that Loni and Alice couldn’t shop!
Some of the old walls clearly show how the castle was destroyed and rebuilt as the stonework sometimes differs dramatically.

We bid farewell to Urquhart and Disney at the main gate.
Our last stop of the day was Fort George, an enormous military base protected by almost 1 mile of massive walls. It was built between 1748-69 by England as a garrison fortress to deter any more Scottish rebellion. It was the biggest such base in the world at the time. It was erected after the final Jacobite Rising was crushed at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. Positioned on a promontory jutting into the Moray Firth, its “ultimate bulwark” and sophisticated defenses were never tested. It has remained in continuous use as a working garrison to this day, and houses a regular battalion of the British Army.
Loni’s entering the outer gate, crossing the first moat, to get to the main gate.

The main gate, with its drawbridge and further earthen embankments.

This thing was waaay overbuilt for whatever threat the Scots may have imposed. The layout:

The main gate is towards the top, where you can see a bridge over water. At the bottom is a chapel. The barracks are in the facing “U”s. Aerial shot:

Something tells me that the lot of the enlisted man wasn’t so hot.

It was pretty amazing to think that soldiers have been stationed in these same buildings for over 250 years. Hope they’ve updated the central heating.