Blogs from Loch Ness, Inverness-shire, Scotland, United Kingdom, Europe

Said the guide as we left Inverness. The idea was that our children would be very proud to tell their friends we had been to the infamous Loch Ness, but having to admit that their parents had visited but not gone swimming, they would be ridiculed and shamed and everything else would be a downward spiral. Which was awkward because I hadn't packed a bathing suit. We stopped first at a spring called Munlochy Clootie Well. I have no idea what it means but it's a spot for an ancient sacred practice that has found its way into modern religion. The idea is that if someone is sick, you take a piece of his/her clothing (preferrably related to the area of the body that is ailing), dip it in this spring (bottom right), sprinkle the water ... read more

I took a bus tour today, which involved getting up way too early and driving (well being driven) 640km up to Loch Ness. The answer is no, I did not see the Loch Ness Monster (Nessie). I did however see many sheep, hairy coo (highland cows, including the famous Hamish, with his 'wife' Heather and their daughter Honey), Urquhart Castle, Larch trees and many rolling hills. Fran, our tour guide told us many interesting stories, such as how the Larch tree got introduced into Scotland. A Larch tree is a deciduous pine tree which was introduced to Scotland by a guy whoses name I don't remember. He had learned while in Venice that the tree's were more resistant to water and he thought 'great we should build ships out of this'. Unfortunately he died before the ... read more

Today we met up with our group. The only problem with bus tours is that you have to do them with other people. We were almost late for the bus, seems the times we were given with our tour information were not right. Luckily we sat at table with people who had started our tour 2 days earlier and they knew the drill. We toured north out of Glasgow, the narrow roads barely wide enough for our tour bus and the oncoming traffic at places. It was raining pretty hard and peering up at the soft green covered mountains from the road we could see rain induced rivers gushing water that looked like scars along their faces. Our trek took us along the lochs(pronounced lo-choking sound-s). First Loch Lochie then Loch Oich then Loch Ness. At ... read more

Loch Ness : started from loch lomond in the morning towards Loch Ness and the plan was to catch ferry which takes inside loch ness.....on the way funny things happend : we were actully looking for a fort to visit in fort william after allmost half hour searching driving through the corners of the town we found out froma friend that there is no fort in town to visit and its just the name of the town: my immediate doubt was how the name of the town 'fort william' is justified if there is no fort in town!!!!!!!!! we continued our journey after wonderfull lunch with take aways from morrisons sitting by a beautiful lake. last ferry trip into the lake was at 3 pm which we are actually aiming for again funny thing happend by ... read more

We couldn’t come to Scotland and not see Nessie so we booked ourselves into Loch Ness Caravan Park. This was right on the side of Loch Ness so if we didn’t see him here then we weren’t going to see him anywhere. We managed to get the last available pitch. Unfortunately when we arrived we discovered that this was right next to the toilets and showers, which we would later find out were not always hot - we would not let this spoil our stay. We needed supplies so took a ride out to our local shops. The journey took a little longer than expected when we realised that our local supermarket was a 50 mile round trip to Inverness. We have to say we were not that impressed with Inverness so having to travel there ... read more

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Today was our day trip to Loch Ness and the Highlands. We set out at 7am this morning and walked the mile and a half to our tour departure point on the Royal Mile. We got there early so we sat at Starbucks across the street and had breakfast while we waited. It was kind of cool to see the Royal Mile so empty. It certainly didn’t look that way when we were there yesterday! At 8:15am our tour departed toward the Highlands. It was a long day spent mostly in a van, but we got to see more of Scotland than we ever would any other way (unless we had rented a car, which I’d like to do if/when I ever come back). Our first stop was in Troussachs in the Highlands. It was here ... read more