Hunting the Duck Ness Monster

Though Mary and I visited Scotland last year with my parents, we spent that entire visit in Edinborough. When my brother and his wife suggested a driving trip that took us through some more outlying and rural areas, we were in. The agenda was aggressive, the car was manual, and the devolution vote was on our last day there; what could go wrong? It turns out, very little would.

We took the train up to Edinburgh late in the afternoon and spent the night there. The first stop the following day was Stirling to see their castle. The castle was interesting, with sections built over different times having very different feelings, though much of what we saw were reproductions. One thing that we saw the originals of was a series of bass relief carvings that were used to line the ceiling of the palace. They are now on display in a gallery, with replicas like these up on on the ceiling. These heads had been carved in the 16th century, and it's uncommon for us to see wooden relics from so long ago in such good shape.

After Stirling we continued on North and West, pushing into an area of rather great natural beauty. This picture is of Loch Lomand, one of a chain of lakes stretching across the country. This area reminded us quite a bit of our trip to the Lake District, though it was even less developed. Mary and I were not aware of it, but apparently the "You take the high road, I'll take the low road" song is about (and named after) Loch Lomond. It seems that everyone but us knew this, which caused "You know, like in the song" to become a running joke between us.

Sprinkled throughout the mid- and high-lands are a large number and variety of castles, both ruined and intact. For some reason, it was the ruined ones that really captivated us. This one was barely signed, and only reachable by a half-mile hiking track. Sometimes, the loch (which surrounds the small peninsula it's on) floods the area, and this path becomes a causeway through it. The castle itself was mostly done-in by time, though a rather significant lightning storm was blamed as the final straw in its decline. You can't see them in this photo, but there was a flock of sheep grazing in the grass by the castle, which just lent it an amazingly gothic and romantic feeling.

After spending the night at an inn close to not much, we pressed on into Oban. This is a coastal town with a rare in-town scotch distillery. Mary and I were keen to go on a distillery tour while on the trip, and this was our chance. The tour was fun and informative, and involve several quite tasty samples. Also tasty were the seafood lunches we ate on this pier, procured from a stand that gets its fish fresh from the boats that dock there. Scotland has a lot of seafood thanks to its position in the North Sea and it did not disappoint.

From Oban, we drove North to the highlands through Glencoe pass. This is a stretch of road through a quite breathtaking section of the highlands, surrounded by craggy hills and almost entirely devoid of trees. Here and there streams cut through the rocky ground, and many trails tempted us to go off on an adventure. Sadly, we didn't have enough time to get too far off the main road here, but I could definitely imagine spending a few days just hiking around this area, discovering it's desolate beauty.

We spent that night in the small town of Fort Agustus, which is located where the canal linking two lochs lets out through a series of locks. Loch locks. What are you seeing here is almost the entirety of the town, but I was quite taken with it. We visited the small canal museum, and in the morning went for a walk in the mist to watch them open the locks for the various boats passing through. Perhaps the highlight for Mary was that the loch Fort Agustus is on is....

...Loch Ness. Most of this day ended up being spent along the shores of this very long lake, which stayed covered in mist until well after midday. We had no Nessy sightings, so I had to come up with an artist's rendition using a picture of a duck that we took later in the day.

Further up the coast of Loch Ness lay Urquhart Castle. This was another ruin, though a much more popular one (with a visitor's center!) It covered a rather large plot of land and had very good signage explaining its history and how it grew and changed over time. Though the picture here is quite dour, the weather improved greatly while we were visiting and we ended up with full sun. With the fog burned off you could appreciate the stunning (and strategic) setting on Loch Ness.

The final city of the visit was Inverness. Inverness is more of a working city and transportation hub than a cultural city, but it does have a fantastic if small pre-historic site: Clava Cairns. This is a small set of 4000 year old stone circles which were used in burial rituals. Unlike other stone circles we have been to, these ones are actually built-up stone donuts with narrow passageways leading to the center of them. They were also not swarmed with tourists like some circles (I'm looking at you, Stonehenge) so it was a lot easier to imagine the spiritual draw the sites must have had on the people who used them.

So what about that Devolution vote? All through the trip, we saw the marketing materials for both sides of the argument, often on the same sign posts. If you were to cast the vote by the number of each side's signs we saw, then it looked like splitting off was in the lead, though in the end the 'no's took it. Interestingly, beyond the signage and one instance of someone cycling through Inverness shouting "Vote Yes!" we did not see or hear anyone openly discussing the vote. Maybe they didn't want to scare off the tourists.

Ultimately, it was a good trip with no drama. My brother did a great job with the wrong-side driving, and we were able to apply the hard lessons learned on our driving trip in Italy to help making escaping the larger towns less stressful. The countryside was lovely, and we saw many great things while still leaving with the desire to return. Really, what else can you ask from a trip?