Corpach

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This morning we took a free tour of the Glasgow City Chambers. The City Chambers, which are still in use today, were built at a time when Glasgow was very, very prosperous and wealthy. The building reflects it. Italian marble, English Alabaster, Cuban Mahogony and many other pricey materials went into the building. It was decorated by some of the best artists Glasgow had at the time and has some artwork on permanent loan from the Kelvingrove museum. The banquet room contains three chandeliers which each weigh half a tonne. Our guide was a little old Glasweigian who said "so we do" quite a lot. He made an interesting point that their mayor is actually called "Lord Provost". Which makes his wife "Lady Provost". At the moment they have a female mayor and there is no gender discrimination, so she is also "Lord Provost" which makes her husband.... yeah.
From Gloasgow we took an interesting train to Corpach. At Glasgow it was a train with six carriages. The first, third and fifth carriages however each contained motors of their own. The reason being, that as we went along the rail line and the line split into two - the train would also split. At two different stations we heard the conductor comment that we had better be sure we were in the correct carriage, because the front two carraiges were about to separate from the train and take the such-and-such line to somewhere-or-other. So by the time we got to Corpach, our six carriage train, had only two carriages.
Tonight we're in Corpach. Beseiged by midges. The locals here live in terror of a small flying insect the size of a sand fly. But they do so for good reason. The hostel owner told us to keep our door shut because it wouldn't be a few thousand midges that fly in, it would be millions. If we held our hand out it would turn black with midges within minutes. Suitably impressed with this warning, we wandered down the road to buy some insect repellant. Believe it or not, we couldn't find any, well, not on the shelves anyway. It turns out that it's an over the counter affair here in Corpach. At five pounds for a small squirt bottle which probably wouldn't cover me, it's no wonder.
Not to be out done by a little insect though, we went for a bit of a wander around Corpach. Corpach is at the beginning of the Great Glen. The Great Glen has a canal system running between it's Lochs and the system starts in Corpach. While out for our walk, we came across the Corpach Sea Lock. As luck would have it, there were also three yachts waiting to use the lock. So we got to watch the process as the yachts entered from Loch Linnhe into the start of Neptunes Staircase (the name of the canal system) which will eventually lead in to Loch Lochy, which in turn will lead on to Loch Oich and then Loch Ness.

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