Day off in Inverness

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Day 3

We woke to what has been the best hostel breakfast yet, boiled eggs, porridge, muslie and the usual coco pops, cornflakes and toast, but with the added spreads of peanut butter, honey and the usual jam. I know this sounds boring to those of you back home but when you get the usual for weeks on end, eggs sound soooo amazing. It is the little things that make all the difference to make you feel more comfortable and more at home.

Nick, Matthew and I decided to wander into town and see if we could find the walking trail which followed Loch Ness. After one dead end, a private property sign and a forray into a local neigbourhood's 21st party by mistake, we decided to instead try the canal walk.

This proved much more interesting as the local fishermen were, moving their boats slowly up each of the canal locks. The whole process of moving the boats up the canal was facinating. First they would move the boats into the first lock by shutting the main road bridge off and letting the boats go through. Then the owners (sometimes even the children on board) would pull the boats theough to the next section (from ropes tied to the front and back) while standing on the bank of the canal. Then they would flood the first lock so the water level was the same as the second lock. Then they could open the gates to the 2nd lock and pull the boats through again to the next level. They would repeat the floodin process to get to the next lock. This took quite some time as there was 4 locks to get through before the boats made it to the Caledonian canal.

We went for a long walk out along the canal for about 2 hours and saw some gorgeous scenery. I have an affinity for stopping to take photos of flowers so many of these are included below.

We were pretty tired and needed a slow afternoon after our long walk so we came back to watch Harry Potter 5 together and chill out for the afternoon. After dinner we played card games, Captains and A***h***s being a favourite, so was spoons - hilarious good fun and only slight injuries were obtained after a view violent grabbing instances.

After dinner our hostel pub put on a quiz night for us later in the evening. We had some strange challenges in addition to the usual quiz questions.

Annie had to hold a glass straight up above her head for over and hour and half and won our team the bonus points! She managed to beat 5 others! Dedication! I was the designated team dancer (only when tv show tunes came on) and I also took over in the official kilt fashion design competition. We had the most stylish couple, however some other teams took it so seriously that they started their catwalk routine by removing various undergarments to be more "authentic". It turned into more of a strip tease show!! Thanks Mark, but that was more than we needed to see. Erikka and Sid, our only couple on tour, had some awesome dance moves though and it took them over the line as their team won. :-) I snuck off to get a photo with the bar staff. Definately the two hottest guys in kilts in all of Scotland, Archie and Osh! Extra thanks to Steph my photographer as I had forgotten my camera!

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