Inverness

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We left Stirling Castle at around 6:00pm on the 7th of October, and we had a long drive (150 miles or so) to go to get to Inverness. To avoid the problems we had previously experienced of making calls to various B&Bs late in the afternoon as we drove along and then finding out the only places left were really expensive, we had decided to book a place to stay before we left Edinburgh. The place we chose was in a place called Nairn which was another 15 miles or so beyond Inverness. This meant that although we knew it was going to be late by the time we got there, we were not too concerned.

We arrived at Inverness at around 8:00pm and decided we would look to for something to eat there first before continuing on to Nairn. As we were coming in on the main freeway from Edinburgh, we thought we wouldn't have to look to hard to find some sort of fast food establishment. However this turned out not to be the case, we kept driving on the freeway and took the exit to the city centre and ended up driving through the city without finding a place for a quick feed. After making a few wrong turns at roundabouts we ended up having a choice between two questionable establishements called "Mr Rice" and "Mr Chips". We chose the latter but regretted it later as Kerrie's "Chicken Burger" turned out to be covered in batter! As we left Inverness on the road towards Nairn we drove straight past a Burger King which would have been perfect for our limited time frame.

As we arrived at the town of Nairn we saw a sign for the Newton Inn which was where we were staying. It took us through a very long dark driveway on a gravel road which took us to a very grand building. The Newton Inn turned out to be the most exclusive place we had stayed at so far on our trip, and it was not the most expensive!

In the morning we left Nairn, and drove straight through Inverness and went onto Loch Ness where we stopped at the Loch Ness Exhibition Centre that had an audio visual presentation about all the alleged sightings of the famous Loch Ness Monster and the various investigations that took place to prove its existance or otherwise.

After the exhibition centre we drove on to Urquhart Castle which is located on the shores of Loch Ness. Unlike the other Scottish castles we had visited, this one has been left as a ruin after it was destroyed by the Grant Clan who used to live there so that no one else could use it when they left. We had a nice sunny day at Urquhart castle and we thought the castle remains look really pretty against the backdrop of Loch Ness. We had lunch at Urquhart Castle and drove on to the accommodation we had prebooked at Glasgow for the night.

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