April 16 & 17: Swimming in Loch Ness & Corrieshalloch Gorge
We woke up to find more frost on the car
the next morning, and Craig’s whizz-bang watch told us that it got down to -4
overnight. There was lots of dew on all
the grass and my socks were wet in minutes.
I was really looking forward to a night in the far-too-fancy B&B we
had organised for that night in Dores, right on the loch. It was a notch out of our price range, but I
was getting pretty hooked on instant mashed potato so we figured they’d balance
each other out.
We’d hoped to do a nice long walk and bag a
few more Munro’s with Craig that morning and got up nice and early. Craig and Nick get on like a house on fire
and sat around talking about what cereal they ate as children, while we ate
cornflakes with berries and drank our Lemsip.
We ran out of time and opted for a shorter walk.
Because Craig and I are idiots, we allowed
Nicholas to be The Reader of the Map and spent a good deal of time trampling
through heather when there was a path not 50m away. We made a mini-summit, snapped some pictures
of the golf course below, and found our time would be better spent eating
scones at the café in Braemar.
Priorities.
Nick and I on the peak that wasn't even a peak
The boys chatted while I downed a delicious
pea soup, before Nicholas and I set off for Inverness. We said goodbye to Craig, vowing to meet up
in Glen Affric the following week.
This place Nicholas and I shelled out on
had a private beach on the loch, which is what sold us really. It wasn’t too far from Inverness either,
which was nice. We’d found them on
AirBnB, but they were more of a formal BnB than some of the spare rooms we’d
been kipping in. We had an upstairs
room, decked out in Harris Tweed which Rosalyn – our Scottish contact –
referred to as “Scottish Gold”, with a private balcony overlooking Loch
Ness. It was basically the stuff dreams
were made of. They also had a copy of a
game called Nessie Hunt, which Nicholas has been trying to source since but it
was a limited run (I don’t think it did too well commercially).
Our amazing blue Harris Tweed bedroom
The little Highland Coo key!
'
Nicholas on the balcony with our tea and cupcakes shortly after we arrived
We watched the sun go down on the beach
(this is a term I use lightly, because I feel like it’s not a beach if it
doesn’t have sand) and went wading in some gumboots we found at the property,
slipping on the mossy rocks underwater.
Some dribbled into my boot and felt like ice.
“I wonder if you can swim in the loch,” I
asked Nick. He later asked the owner of
the B&B, who said yes and people often do it on the first day of the New
Year. In wetsuits. They also do a charity swim in high
summer. In wetsuits. We didn’t have a wetsuit.
We also found a cat on the beach (found is
another term I use lightly, because it technically belonged to the
B&B). They used to have two cats,
and locked them both outside in case visitors had allergies, but a car hit one. The owner relayed that story with a chuckle,
saying it was a lesson for the children about crossing the road. I bit my tongue, because I can get a bit
mouthy when cats are concerned.
We nabbed some dinner at the Dores Inn,
which was a pretty cute little place. I
had a lentil burger (the first in far too long) and Nick had macaroni and
cheese (which is sold literally everywhere in Scotland). I downed a Hendrick’s with slices of
cucumber, and considered eating the aromatic cucumber sound compensation for
skipping out on my salad. Apparently
there’s a guy who lives in the carpark of the Dores Inn looking for the Loch
Ness monster, and has done for over 20 years.
Sounds like my kinda guy. He’d
packed up for the night though, so we made a mental note to come back.
Sunset over Loch Ness
Nicholas befriending the cat
Wading in the loch
Monster hunting with Dinky
The next morning, we got up bright and
early to venture into the cold, cold loch.
Apparently the surface temperature of the loch is a balmy 4-5 degrees
all year, so it shouldn’t matter we were heading in for a dip while the frost
was melting on the leaves around us. I
really want to pretend it was a magical experience and I could feel monsters
tickling my toes, but I was just about vomiting from cold in my bathers and
almost completely numb when I got out.
This is a face that says 'I don't think I want to swim in the loch anymore'
After breakfast (which, like everything at
the B&B was top-notch) we were meeting up with the fabled Rosalyn, who I
had been chatting to online for a little while.
I’m usually pretty hopeless with keeping up with people online, so I was
pretty impressed. She works for tourism
in Scotland and is amazingly good at it.
Because she’s also an amazingly generous human being, she offered to
drive Nick and I around to the Black Isle and for a beautiful drive through the
mountains. Nick looked forward to having
somebody else drive for a while, and I looked forward to not being berated for
my poor map-reading skills (we have this in common).
Nicholas going for a dip in the loch
One way to wake up (not advised though)
Rosalyn took us on a lovely drive, pointing
out all the necessary sights and giving us all the historical references one
might need. We pulled up at a place called
Corrieshalloch Gorge, which was a waterfall unlike any I’ve seen in
Australia. We took a few pictures, but
they don’t do it justice. The air smelt
really mossy, and it was far more humid than what we’d come to expect in the
UK. We spied a tiny lizard who’d come
out for a little bask in the sun (Rosalyn was shocked – she’d never even seen a
lizard in Scotland) and other tiny, mossy waterfalls dripping onto the
path. It was, like most things in
Scotland, magic.
A small, beautiful stop off we made on the way to the gorge
Corrieshalloch Gorge
We were itching for lunch, so Rosalyn took
us to one of her favourite places for cake.
We were a tad disappointed that she was offering us cake, not donuts,
because the one thing we had garnered from her suggestions for our trip was
that she was a fan of donuts. The cakes
were good though, so we understood.
The three of us were sprawled out in the
sun when I saw an outfit that looked awfully familiar.
“Nick, that guy’s wearing the same
motorbike gear as Craig,” I said.
“Maybe he works for Triumph, too,” Nick
suggested.
It was Craig.
Nick and Craig began their usual banter,
and I sat in the sun talking to Rosalyn until the sun began to set and she
needed to head home for dinner. She did
give us the scenic tour on the way home as well, pointing out the intricacies
of Inverness and explaining that Inverness Castle wasn’t open the public unless
you were a criminal. It was now a
courthouse.
We picked up some groceries and head to
where we are now: Inverarnie. It’s a
little away from Inverness (inver means ‘mouth of the river’) and we’re staying
in a nice place on a big plot of land.
It could be as nice and as homey as it wants, but we had spoiled
ourselves too much with the B&B on the loch and I wanted to go paddling
again.
While we were sitting in the sun with Craig, we saw this man walk off the sand into the water. He just kept going and going. Perhaps fishing? Who knows.
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