Inverness and Loch Ness

Heather on the Hill

We got up and out of the Guest House bright and early this morning, in part aided by the noisy seagulls that made loud noises all night long. Breakfast wasn’t bad, and it included my first experience with fried black pudding. Interesting.

We found our way out of Aberdeen and hit the open road, driving through the Scottish Highlands. What a beautiful part of the world! We drove through rolling farmland, with mountains in the distance, every color of land and growth you could imagine. I loved seeing a low, brownish something from a distance and discovering later it must be heather.

Huntly Castle

We stopped to roam through the Huntly castle ruins. If you like old places like that, you would really like the way this one is presented. There are walkways suspended where floors once were, so you can see what’s left of fireplace and stone-carved mantels on the second floor. The grounds are nice, with a pretty river on one side, and Huntly golf course on the other. if it hadn’t been so early in the day, it would have been a great place for a picnic.

I wasn’t sure what our next destination was; Judy just kept telling me where to turn. The roads got smaller and smaller, and when we got to Dufftown, Judy said, “Turn left.” Yay! The Glenfiddich distillery! We got there just as the promo film was starting, watched that, then followed our guide around the place as she explained the process. The group we were in was really small, and we loved it. I was driving, so I missed out on the tasting, but Judy tasted their liqueur (not exported yet) and said it was good. We shopped a litte, had our picnic on the grounds, then headed out again.

The site also has a small artists’ center with an exhibition room. We saw a musical instrument installation, two of them, actually, with photographs, graphics, and so on. For filling out surveys about that experience, we each got a miniature of Grant’s Whisky. They made a great aperitif for me before dinner.

Elgin Cathedral

We drove on to Elgin, stopping there to walk around the grounds and ruins of the Cathedral. The Chapter house is still roofed, with vaulting in the ceiling. That’s pretty amazing. We found the “Biblical Gardens” to be a waste of time, however. There was nothing to see but some unidentified plants and uninspired statues of Jesus. Labels for some of the more interesting and unusual plants would have helped.

On the drive north to Inverness, we did make a detour to Ft. George, but couldn’t see much. We drove on in to Inverness, bought a map and found East Dene Guest House without any trouble. Our host was very pleasant, and we enjoyed just relaxing on the enclosed porch after a steak dinner at Nico’s. The next morning, we talked with our host about our plans for the day, and took his suggestions readily.

Caledonian Canal & River Ness

We walked to the Tourist Office and booked a three hour cruise through the Caledonia Canal and Loch Ness. It was to take us as far as Drumnadrochit and urquhart Castle before returning through the Canal. A shuttle took us to the boat, which was smaller than the Rhine cruise boat we had been on with Richard earlier that summer. We loved the trip! In that short amount of time, we experience rain, sunshine, mist — every kind of summer weather but fog. The canal paralelled the River Ness for part of the way, and like I always do, I wigged out a little over the locks. On the way to the Loch.

The water was dark. Not thick or muddy, but dark. I had noticed the same thing yesterday in the River Ness when we walked across the foot bridge to go to dinner. We saw wild fox gloves all along the canal, as well as a different spiky wildflower with a similar color blossoms. I don’t know what they are, but we’ve seen a lot of them in Scotland, ever since we landed in Edinburgh. Our ticket was for the water cruise only, so we didn’t get all and tour the castle. That wasn’t a problem, because the ruins were really pretty from the water.

Urquhart Castle on Loch Ness

We made it back through the canal to the Tourist Office, had lunch at a bakery, then walked back to East Dene to get the car. Following our host’s advice, we took the bridge across the Beauly Firth to the Black Isle. I’m not sure why it’s called the Black Isle, because nothing was really black and it’s only a peninsula, not a real island. We drove up a hill (small mountain?), through a beautiful valley, and up the mountain on the other side. We stopped at a roadside car park at the Falls of Rogie, hoping we might see salmon there, as Don (our host) told us we might.

We followed the marked trail into the woods. And farther into the woods. Still farther.

Eogie Falls

What a beautiful place! Mountainous, rocky terrain, huge tall pines, “Scottish Moss” on the lower (dead) limbs, frens of different varieties, wild foxflobe blooming everywhere, birds … on and on. We met a lot of Italian tourists who were returning to the tour bus parked in the lot., That was reassuring, knowing we weren’t just walking to nowhere. We walked downhill on the trail, then back up, before we finally reached the falls.

Beautiful! But no salmon. Wrong time of year. There’s a swinging bridge over the river below the falls, so you can see everything about the falls. We walked back to the car, the uphill climb even harder this time, and talked to an 80-year-old man who was walking right behind us. He and his son were from Nairn, which we had driven through the day before. He had been a ship captain and knew Mull and Tobermory, the next stop on our trip, well. It was fun to talk with him.

We drove back through the valley, stopping to photograph some sheep, and back to East Dene. Over a glass of wine with our host, we learned that the other plant we saw is Lupine. In Scotland both lupine and foxglove are weeds, and I do wish our weeds were that colorful. Maybe I can grow some when we get home–if I’m really careful about where and when I plant them.

The next morning we were to take a long drive to the west coast of Scotland and onto the Isle of Mull, one of the Inner Hebrides. That was an adventure we were looking forward to!