Inverness to Oban

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August 29 - Inverness to Oban

(Geoff) Time to head south! Set the GPS (now we have changed settings and have a not so stern male pommie telling us where to go) and left Inverness at 9.15 heading for Oban on the west coast. this will be our overnight stop before we get onto the ferry for Barra.

As we headed south, we drove alongside Scotland's famous Loch Ness. The Loch is 23 miles (about 36 km) long but only ½ to ¾ mile wide. Still it is very deep - in parts up to 700 feet and contains a lot of water. We stopped at the end of the Loch at a little town called Fort Augustus (didn't look like a fort, just a little country village) and decided to go for a cruise on the Loch. Hopped on board a 50 foot stinky and spent an hour going around the Loch - the weather was quite calm and the water very flat. As we turned for the return journey, I thought I saw something away in the distance so took a chance and fired off a photograph - maybe this will make our fortune - I need to sell the photo to the media!!

It was now noon so we decided to continue south and stop at the next town, Fort William, for lunch. This was only about 30 miles away but it still took us nearly 45 minutes to arrive. Had another pub meal here though the menu was a bit different than most others. Sue had a haddock bisque, bit salty but quite tasty, and I had a chicken madras/mango curry - very nice. Next stop is Oban.

We had to work our way all the way down Loch Linhee and the up the other side (no bridge across) and then into what looked like fiordland. We travelled along a valley surrounded by quite high hills. It was a nice little trip and we finally arrived in Oban. This is the port out to the islands and we will head to the Outer Hebrides tomorrow. The town is built on quite steep hillsides around a bay. It took us while to find our accommodation as there are no street numbers - the houses all have names. We were looking for a B&B called Dunheanish and we passed all sorts of names before we came on ours. We were welcomed by William and shown to a front room with a view over the bay. A very nice room it was too with a four poster double bed and a couple of sitting chairs at the end of the bed.

After settling in, we went for walk down the hillside into town. We meandered up and down for a while until we decided it was time for dinner. Found a nice fish restaurant on the quayside and had a beautiful dinner. Afterwards, it was time to walk off dinner with a climb back up the hill. Thankfully we will only have to do this once as we will be in town tomorrow before heading to the ferry.

(Sue) I thought long and hard about bringing our laptop computer in case we could get Internet access from our accommodation. I have been pleasantly surprised as most places (including B&Bs) have wireless access which ahs enabled us to keep you up to date. It has been a lot of fun sharing our travels so far. Not sure about Barra?, but we'll update again in Glasgow before we fly to Barcelona.

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