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Published: April 28th 2012
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We headed off today to travel the main lochs of Scotland from west to east, starting at the famous Loch Ness. The water is so deep that if you took all the world's population, doubled it and put everyone in the loch, you still wouldn't have filled Loch Ness. Incredible. It is a sheer drop from the edge too, it doesn't slowly get deeper. The colour is also dense it is like black ink and there is less than 2 metres visability no matter to what depth you dive. One of the inhabitants is a fish that only lives in the bottom levels of the loch and eats its own kind until the population is so low that they stop eating eachother and procreate to boost numbers, but then go back to eating eachother after the population boost. Inventive?
We then visited the ruins of Urquhart castle where they were charging to get in, crazy considering it is a ruin also. They were even growing trees up against the wall so you couldn't see in. Naturally there were signs saying "don't stand in the walls" and these spots were obviously the best vantage points so I will let the photos
tell the rest of that story! Haha The medieval architecture is increcible, as are the wild daffodils, pansys and daisys on the roadside. I love the wildness of the mountain country and the beauty of the loch's, it is such a stunning country, I just wish they could turn up the heater! It is sooo cold. :-)
Other places were the commando memorial and Inverlochy castle (ruin). We then headed to fort William for lunch. At this point I was so cold I thought my toes were going to drop off having only brought ballet flats (silly, I know now). So 2 of the other girls and I bought new hiking boots for 20 pounds! Sooo much more comfortable now! I was planning on buying Italian leather, not waterproof and fleecy but I welcome the change! (So do my toes). They look like moon boots, but I am making a new fashion statement, haha. It is so so very cold here. The German boys on our tour laugh at me because I complain about not ever being warm and meanwhile they are walking around in thongs, shorts and a t-shirt (inside anyway) whereas I am still in 2 layers
- sometimes 3, inside.
We have been lucky to have mostly "glorious" weather with a little of "atmospheric" weather today where we visited Glenfinnan and were almost all blown of the side of a mountain where we all went to take photos of the Harry Potter bridge from the 2nd movie while it poured with rain and the wind was blowing at gale force levels. The weather was heading towards "dramatic" standards at this stage!! One guy, Max, from Russia, had worn a rain poncho which seemed like a good idea until it tried to suffocate him in the wind and he couldn't see and almost fell over. Entertaining though - his English is a work in progress so we could only just make out what he was yelling about as his poncho attempted to eat him. haha The ppl are really great and I am getting used to hostel accomodation - it ok when you know everyone in your room and most people on the tour are Australian, but a few others from Germany, Russia, Taiwan, NZ.
Max was also the instigator of our clan name. He somehow mixed our guides name, Carol, with Peggy, which ended
up sticking. Typically Australian style, we never call anyone we really like by their own name! So we became clan McPeggy.
On the way back to the hostel we visited the floating pub on the Caledonian Canal where we all had hot chocolate and ginger snaps! The owner of the boat showed us the most incredible card tricks I have ever seen, his Dad turned up and did a mind reading trick too. Such a great afternoon. We then headed to Fort Augustus for a demonstration by "sexy" Ken of how the traditional higlanders of Scotland lived and fought. They were a bloodthirty lot often having 3-4 weapons on hand at any one time and able to kill you or your horse in even more ways. Grusome. The sun came out in the afternoon so Nick and I went to get photos of the Caledonian Canal lochs. We stayed at Morag's hostel which was really great as they had a bar, free internet, great food and we listened to a local guy play and sing traditional music for the rest of the evening.
There are soo many photos! I was a little snap happy! Check it out, they
might go over 2 pages. Xo
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TD
non-member comment
McPeggy??
Good Idea..feed Nessie, and get rid of excess population