Lochs and Highland drives

Lochs and Highland drives

Finally catching up on the rest of the Northern trip after the silly season. 

Tony on the banks of Loch Lomond

We started our morning with excellent breakfast in the dinning room of Cadross estate listening to an over enthusiastic rooster. From there we wound our way down to the edge of Loch Lomand to admire its bonny banks before setting off to the proper north of Inverness. 

View down Loch Lomond

We both heartily agree that the highlight of our trip was the drive we did through the  Trossachs national park, past the looming peaks of Ben More, Ben Lui and Ben Starav - a mountain range called the Grampian Mountains. The scenery really was breathtakingly beautiful. The stark contrast between the green of the pines (plantation) and the brown and red of the hills was stunning, but then you added the snow. The winding mountain roads would take you past a mighty peak, when suddenly a snowy peak would appear around the side, and grow until it took over the whole of the horizon. 

First peak at the peaks

Most spectacular were the sharp edges of the mountains, reflected in the clear mountain lakes. Several people had pulled off on the edge of the road, right in the way of narrow 2 lane traffic, to capture the images - I did my best whilst the car was moving. 

Perfectly still lakes

We came through the mountain pass to a little village on the shores of Loch Leven. We pulled in for a break and bought some chips from a lovely lady in a roadside caravan (£1.50 for a serve of hot chips). The village is a holiday spot during the summer, however it gets very quiet during the winter and she described watching the sun creep further and further down the valley as the year progressed until it no longer reached her little food caravan. From that day she knew that the whole southern side of the valley and the loch wouldn’t see sun again until the start of the next summer. Her solution was to go to Egypt for a holiday. I’m not sure that would be enough for me to work/live in a place that didn’t see a spot of sunshine for half of each year.

Steep valleys and bleak houses

We continued through the mountains to Fort WIlliam which whilst not very pretty, was a strategically very important town. It was the point at which boats from the lower Lochs could enter Loch Ness and travel all the way to Inverness in the north. It is also the point from which many of the ferries to the Hebrides and other islands depart. 

Locks at Loch Ness

Loch gates

From Fort William we travelled up Loch Lochy to Fort Augustus where we searched for a place for lunch. We had by this time developed a lunch curse on our trip. Whenever we thought it was about time to find a place for lunch, all possible choices would evaporate from the map, and we would be left with dodgy roadside options of pies, horrid sandwiches or in a couple of cases nothing at all but a few packets of crisps. Partly this was due to the time of year - all the good pubs serving lunch were closed for the winter - or only open on Fridays and the weekends. Fort Augustus was no exception and we ended up getting take away rolls with sausages or battered chicken in them. We ate them standing by the locks that got boats from Loch Lochy to Loch Ness. This was the only good thing about the lunch as we busily distracted ourselves from the disgusting lunch by trying to work out how the system of gates and pumps in the lock worked.

We followed Loch Ness up its entire length - arriving at its second most famous feature - Castle Urquhart only 40 minutes before it closed. The site is set up for thousands of tourists to pass through and has a movie theatre showing a video on the history of the castle which you are supposed to watch before you head down to the ruin itself. We were so late in the day that they allowed us to skip the video and head straight to the site. We were lucky in a way, we had the site almost to ourselves in the gathering dusk (with the exception of about 5 other tourists) and the attendant who was supposed to be locking up ended up following us around much of the site giving us a personal tour and history lesson. Urquhart  was another castle eventually dismantled (blown up) so it couldn’t be used by the other side once it was surrendered.  A controlling point for most of Loch Ness at a time when there were no roads from one end to the other it was an extremely important strategic base and was claimed by one side or another until its destruction in 1692. One really interesting feature was the water gate where most of the access to the castle was gained including all supplies of food. The road along the Loch wasn’t built until 100 years after the castle was destroyed. 

Castle Urquhart

We finished our drive on the Black Isle just West of Inverness in a lovely B&B run by Minty and Gavin. They had booked us into their local pub in the tiny village of North Kessock for dinner, and after Tony had sampled the haggis and I had fabulously fresh fish (Scotland really does excellent seafood), we pootled back to Minty’s house, and curled up in our  separate little beds (we had forgotten to check that there was a double available - but it ended up being quite quaint and 1950s’ ish with hot water bottles that Minty had thoughtfully put in our beds while we were at dinner).