April 18 & 19: Riding the Ness Express and Urquhart Castle
There are heaps of boat trips you can do on
the Loch. You can get as ‘naff’ as you
want (Rosalyn explained that this was Scottish slang for very cheesy), you can
go the super commercial route or you can go with something a little more
personal. We decided to go with the
latter, and opt for a ‘Nessie Hunting Tour’ on an IRB (which they called RIB’s
here). One of the tour guides is a guy
called Marcus, who won 1000 pounds in 2011 for the best picture of Nessie, a
competition he claims he didn’t know he entered.
Marcus' sonar image
Before we arrived at the boat trip we
decided to follow the Nessie Trail and do some spotting from the road. Every few hundred metres there was another
lookout spot that you could park at, jump out and take pictures. One had a
narrow metal staircase leading down to the rocky edge of the loch, where we
went to sit for a while. Rosalyn had
advised spending the day on the loch, because the weather was pristine. She very aptly described the loch as
‘glittering’ on days like this. Nicholas
skipped rocks while I sat on a big boulder, dipping my stocking-clad feet in
the cold loch. It still felt warmer
than the previous morning though.
A little journey we made to the lochside
I picked up a few pieces of quality 'literature' to read on the way
The view from the road
We ended up getting a late lunch at Fort
Augustus, where our tour was to leave from.
Nicholas got a veggie burger, which was literally a veggie patty on a
bun – no sauce, cheese or anything else – and we also got a macaroni cheese
pie, which is gross as it sounds.
Scotland is a very strange place foodwise.
The people joining us on the boat were a
pair of young Scottish boys with their grandparents, and a father and daughter
duo. Nicholas and I nabbed the front
seats and our skipper took us on a 20mi circuit of the southern half of the
loch. Unfortunately, the man doing the
talking wasn’t Marcus – who instead steered the boat from the back – and had
little to say in the way of Nessie finding.
The water was probably too choppy anyway.
The view from Fort Augustus
At the front of the Ness Express!
The sunglasses are more to stop all the wind drying out your eyeballs than any sun protection
The following morning was Sunday, and most
things in the Highlands are closed on Sundays.
Urquhart Castle was open and ready to receive tourists, so we popped in
there for most of the day. The
meteorological bureau predicted clouds and wind and, as is typical in Scotland,
lied, so we lazed in the sun for most of the morning. Nicholas got a bit pink in the process.
While Nicholas napped, I did a couple of
quick watercolours of the pine forest on the lochside opposite us, and watched
people on sailboats pass by. I decided
that I wanted to live on a boat on the loch and made a mental note. As I painted, I planned out the amazing house
I could build into the cliff so that it overlooked, like a slightly less
precarious version of Aunt Josephine’s house in A Series Of Unfortunate Events. It could have a glass bottom so I could keep
watch on the loch from above. On our
boat trip the previous day, we learnt that somebody had a personal hydro plant
built into the side of the mountain. I
would also have my own hydro plant. How
I’ll finance that endeavor I haven’t worked out yet.
The loch from Urquhart Castle
A sail boat with a secret motor that he turned on when the wind went against his favour
This would be my view if I was a Grant
This would also be my view if I was a Grant
Nicholas gave me a lecture because I hadn't really taken any pictures of the castle, just the loch, so I took this
Nicholas being as tall as a trebuchet
Urquhart Castle
When the wind from the north became a bit
unbearable, we hopped back into the car to thaw out, driving back down to Fort
Augustus and up the Dores side of the loch again. We visited the Falls of Foyers, which didn’t
seem quite as impressive, seeing as we’d seen Corrieshalloch previously, but
was still very beautiful. We found a few
small harbours down beneath Foyers, where we looked at property and I continued
to watch the loch.
On the way home, we tried to make contact
with the eccentric man who sold his house and dumped his girlfriend to search
for the Loch Ness Monster, but he was out (probably searching for the Loch Ness
Monster).
Falls of Foyers
Looking for a monster at Lower Foyers
Rocking my sweet new threads
"Searching for Nessie since 1991"
This is the mobile library that the Nessie Hunter lives in. It's no longer mobile and lives in the carpark at the Dores Inn
Looking toward Fort Augustus from Dores
The sunset from our place in Inverarnie
About the Author
0 comments