Kilt Necks - In Search of Nessie

Kilt Necks - In Search of Nessie is a continuation of blog posts about our Easter break in Scotland.

At this point in the trip, we found ourselves leaving the Isle of Skye and heading back onto the mainland.  Our destination: Loch Ness.  Yep, we were in the mood to hunt for Nessie.

First though, we had to make our way back along the road, off the island via Skye Bridge.  Again, even seeing this landscape a second time, for the most part since we were retaking some of the same roads as we did before since there is only one to get onto the island, we were speechless.  One could not help but feel at peace here.  That is until you hit a construction zone.  Yep, just like every other country: it was now construction season.  At least in some spots you had just a traffic light and the wait wasn't too long.

Someone actually put down the sun visor today after commenting, "The sun is so

bright".  Not something we thought we'd say in Scotland.

Yet another sunny day for us!

Back through the highlands we do go :)

Arrows to help out us tourists

(or to keep the locals safe, lol).

Pep had a sky light :o

On the banks of Loch Ness, we first stop to take a gander at Urquhart Castle.  This had to be my favourite castle so far.  Although it was pretty much in ruins, the grounds were so expansive that you could just imagine the parties that were held here.  There were many different quarters, and in the information we read it was mentioned that due to destruction and being left in ruins for many years, there are parts of the castle that are unknown as to their uses.

Down to the cellar

Keeping the riff raff out ;)

After we had spent some time exploring the castle, we headed to Drumnadrochit, a little village  nearby.  It was here that after we spent some time walking through the town and making a lovely purchase or two, we got ready for our main day's event: hunting Nessie!  The night before, Whitney had booked a Nessie hunting tour with Loch Ness Cruises and so we were excited to see if we could spot this elusive sea creature.   Our boat was called the Nessie Hunter and our skipper was none other than the infamous George Edwards.  George had grown up around Loch Ness and had been sighting the creature for well on 40 yrs.  The deepest recorded part of Loch Ness is named after him, "Edwards Deep" for he was the one to discover and record it.  HIs boat was also the one National Geographic climbed aboard when they were in Scotland doing a piece on the Loch Ness Monster.  George is a true believer in Nessie and even has photographs to prove it.  Whilst we didn't spot her/him/it/them, we did have a fabulous time listening to all his knowledge, partaking in his lively banter, asking him questions, and getting a chance to go boating in a small group setting.  I would totally recommend his tour to anyone wanting to head on on Loch Ness to find Nessie.

The sheep weren't too concerned about Nessie.

Perhaps because they are quite far inland.

Drumnadrochit

She's ready to spot a sea creature

The clouds don't look good this way 

Skipper George and his first mate

Ok Nessie, where are you?

Found her! ;)

The water is gets extremely deep quickly that you can actually drive this close

to the shore without running aground.

Us with skipper George

Oh no, Nessie escaped!

Whitney said she was a quieter co-pilot than me :(

After our tour, we headed south along Loch Ness to Fort Augustus where we were staying for the night.  It was interesting this drive along the lake as it was a forestry area, not an industry I normally would have associated with Scotland.  Again it amazed me at all the different landscapes this small country encompassed.

Once we arrived in Fort Augustus, we checked into our hotel, The Lovat then took a stroll through the tiny, tiny town to sightsee and find a place for dinner.  We heard from a lot of locals that many of the towns we've been to so far in this trip up in the more northern areas of Scotland are only prospering due to tourism.  And it's quite easy to see that unfortunately that would be the case.

We found a nice place to eat called The Boathouse which was situated right on the banks of the south end of Loch Ness.  Although many of the places we've eaten at to date haven't been fancy or extravagant, I can easily say that I've had some of the most delicious meals of my life on this trip.   And The Boathouse was no exception.  Some humus, a yummy pot pie and a croissant completely satisfied me and were a nice send off as we ambled back to the hotel to await travels the next day.

The Lovat.

Yes, they even made jokes themselves about the name.

Eg. "You'll love it at The Lovat" (lol, groan)

Locks on The Caledonian Canal

Connects Loch Ness with the waterway to the south

We were excited to see this.

Weren't sure if it was a.m. or p.m., but found out after 8:30pm that

it was actually a.m., lol.

Loch Ness

Kilt Necks - Castles, Fairy Pools and the Isle of Skye

This is another blog post in the series Kilt Necks, Scottish adventures during Easter break 2016.

We left Fort William on Monday morning and headed for the Isle of Skye.  It was a rocky start to the day as first the car wouldn't start, due to the steering wheel being in the wrong place for this to occur, and then when getting gas we couldn't get the gas cap off.  See, the car needed to use the key to get it off, but we weren't adept at doing this.  Luckily a nice man from the truck beside us aided us in this task, and showed us what we were doing wrong.  Still loving the friendly, helpful people in this country.

Before long we were off to the Isle of Skye, with a few planned stops along the way.  It felt like home for as we drove we had to pass a couple of different farm machinery on the road.  As the road wound along and through the mountains and hills we got a magnificent view of the coast.  So singing along to our newly downloaded Scottish party song album, well singing along really wasn't the case, we casually enjoyed the scenery of the western Scottish coastland.

Windy road ahead

The landscape changes quickly and sometimes dramatically

A little waterfall spurting out by the road

This has been a life saver this trip.  Never have I read a guide

book so much in my entire life, lol.

Found many a "swing bridge" for boats in this country

Creepily, the song that was playing at this moment

was "Ghostriders in the Sky" :o

We paused periodically for pictures.

There are many places to pull out to do so along this drive.

Our first stop was at the Eilean Donan Castle.  This castle still belongs to the MacRae family and is one of the most iconic images related to Scotland today.  And yes, John McCrae, author of "In Flander's Fields" is related to this family.  We bought tickets and walked along the bridge that connected the castle to the mainland.  It was a beautiful castle in an amazing location, perfectly situated with open views to the waterways on all sides.  This castle was bombed in the late 1700s and left to ruins until 1912 when restoration started.  20 yrs later, the castle was restored although the lead man in charge of the restoration died before its completion.  We walked around, through, and up in the castle; marvelling in the wonders of it's creation and revelling in the stone architecture.

We followed our castle visit with a quick bite in the cafe and then were on our way once more.

Next it was on to the Glenbrittle area to see the Fairy Pools.  We weren't quite sure what they were, but were curious to find out.  Along our way we encountered interesting signs, most traditional to Scotland I would believe: "Feral Goats 2 miles" and signs with a single sheep image.

When we finally found the road to the Fairy Pools, indicated to by only a small wooden hand-painted sign, we were in for a bit of a shock.  Prior to coming for the trip, Whitney had read up on Scotland driving.  In her reads she came upon information about single lane roads, meaning roads with only one lane for BOTH vehicles.  These did however have passing pull out spots, but you had to pay close attention to oncoming traffic so one of you could pull into these places while the other drove past.  And yes, this is exactly what we came upon on the broken paved then only dirt road.  Well needless to say it wouldn't have been as tense as it was had the road not been windy and up and over a hill.  However, we prevailed!  Also, I believe that most of the drivers were tourists and everybody was very understanding of one another.

Passing lane coming up

When we reached the parking area, another shock came to us.  To get to the fairy pools it was going to be a bit of a hike. LOL.  At this point, we felt that perhaps we should have read up on this a bit more prior to coming.  Nevertheless, a challenge was presented to us and we took it head on.  So we parked, jumped out of the car and proceeded to follow the path to the Fairy Pools.  After some rock hopping, jumping over creeks and enduring a wet dog who shook his water off on me we made it to the Fairy Pools.  It was neat to see how the water could be so still in one area, and then rapidly throwing itself haphazardly over rocks in the next.  And the water was crystal clear!

All the way down and up to get to the Fairy Pools

A little leap

The cars are WAY up there on the hill

Fairy Pools

This crossing was more of a hop, skip and a leap!

On our way to our next stop, we had another classic Scottish moment: there was a rogue sheep on the road!  Yep, and not just on a sign but in real, wooly fashion.  Of course we stopped at one of many pull out places for picture taking, and I ran back to get a quick pic.  As soon as it saw me though it started to meander towards me, so I hightailed it out of there pretty quick.  I wasn't up to date on my sheep knowledge and wasn't sure how it would react to me if we met.

The next point of interest we reached this day was Dunvegan Castle.  Another castle in Scotland that is still owned by one of the clans, the MacLeods.  This castle is actually still a residence to the current Chief of the Clan MacLeod.  After purchasing tickets, we first entered the very modernized castle and perused the various rooms.  Of course some rooms are set up for tourist viewing while others are closed off; I'm assuming those are the rooms in current use by the family.  Then we ambled through the marvellous grounds which consisted of different gardens - the Water Garden, the Round Garden and the Walled Garden.  It was amazing to see how lush the landscape was complete with flowers, waterfalls and grassy and woodsy areas.  Just darling!

Dunvegan Castle.

We couldn't take pictures inside. :/

Water Garden

Round Garden

Walled Garden

Now we were on to Portree.  Along the way we luckily found our hotel for the night, The Skeabost Hotel.  When booking this hotel last night on Booking.com, it had said that it was in Portree.  But this was not correct.  It was actually 10 minutes OUTSIDE of the town of Portree, but thankfully it was on our drive there and that we had a car so we could go into Portree to explore and eat after checking in.

Portree was a quaint little town.  After locating parking in the centre, we meandered through the streets for a bit, stopping to pick up a couple of souvenirs.  On our trip, probably due to missing on lunches, that we spend a good portion of our day driving, and we get early starts so as not to have to drive in the night, we sometimes arrive in places too early for dinner.  Thankfully though dinner service usually started at 5:30pm, whereas if we were back in Italy we would be waiting until 7:00pm.  So the Antler Bar & Grill promptly served us a delicious meal, chicken tikka curry of all things, and had us back in our hotel for an early evening of bevies and card games while we relaxed after a very busy day.

Really wish this was applied in other places 

Counting up all her coins

Found another rogue sheep on the way back to the hotel.