Blogs from Drumnadrochit, Inverness-shire, Scotland, United Kingdom, Europe

Saturday, 23 July 2022, Day 6 Great Glen Way, Blackfold to Drumnadrochit from north to south today. 8 miles, 3 hours 28 min. 439 feet elevation gain by Garmin 8.1 miles, 3:29 hours, 522 feet elevation gain with All Trails App. Today we have Loch Ness Travel provide a shuttle from our hotel to the Blackfold area along the GGW. Jo and I then walked from this point south west along the route back to Drumnadrochit. This broke up the 20 mile route from here to Inverness. It was estimated to be a 12 mile walk. The driver mentioned how glad we should be to be taken up the road of this steep hill. As we drove we saw walkers along the mile and a half section that is along the A82 setting out for Inverness. ... read more

llUnfortunately, we did not find the Loch Ness monster (aka Nessie) today, but we did have fun looking! We went on a Nessie hunter boat cruise on the Loch (our boat captain sounded a wee bit like Sean Connery!), and learned: 1. The water is black-ish appearing because of the soil around the loch. There is a lot of peat in the soil (maybe Nessie likes peaty whiskey?) 2. Loch Ness is about 50 feet higher than sea level, about mile wide, 23 miles long and DEEP - about 750 feet deep at the deepest point. To illustrate the depth, our boat captain kept moving the boat closer to shore and reading out the depth we approached the shore. Basically, there's a very minimal shoreline, and then a fairly steep drop very close to shore. 3. ... read more

Following the vast quantities of beer consumed at Oktoberfest, it was time to let my liver recover, and actually spend 5 days of a week at work. Thankfully I couldn’t stick to it for too long, and 5 weeks after Oktoberfest, I was off for 9 days in Scotland for a sport weekend followed by a 6 day tour through the Isle of Skye and the Highlands. But first, in the 5 weeks before Scotland, I made sure I got plenty done around London as well. I made it up to Leeds for another couple of games (3-1 and 3-0 wins), before going to my first ever Leeds away match at Southend-on-sea, which turned out to be a disappointing 1-0 loss. I came back into London late on the Tuesday night and it had been snowing! ... read more

Day three of my trip was another early start. Doing the West Highland Way and the Great Glen Way I always stuggle to sleep for any lenght of time. Most nights I am restless and I always seem to start very early in the morning. This day was no different and the thing I remeber most about it was that this was the start of the big climb. This was a sharp climb outside the village of Invermoriston which was about 4miles from the campsite I stayed in. This was the highest part of the entire route and It was very hard going with a large backpack. I met a few people that morning who staying in B&B's in Invermoriston and had there luggage carried to the next B&B in Fort Agustus. At this point it ... read more

Our Christmas holiday started on the 21st of December, even though we had already been travelling around for the last 3 weeks. This trip however, was pretty much just going to be sitting around eating and drinking. We left Cardiff Friday night and headed up to Drumnadrochit in Scotland which is on Loch Ness. Our mode of transport was Jason and Kirstyn’s new Volkswagen camper, Clancy. After a very comfortable 15hr drive in Clancy and a short stop at a very crowded Morrisons in Fort William (to stock up for our Christmas feast) we arrived at our destination. Drumnadrochit is a very small, sleepy village and our cottage is nicer than we expected, with a great kitchen and even a bath! We arrived to some very cold weather with most things iced over including the river ... read more