Nessie - Sunday

After another excellent breakfast at the Uig Hotel with some locals, we headed off for Loch Ness and Inverness.

Since it was a 2 1/2 hour drive we booked a 1pm cruise to look for Nessie leaving from Fort Agustus. Fort Agustus is at the southern end of Loch Ness and is the start of the southern  locks that forms part of the Caledonian Canal that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the North Sea. It has a long history of settlement and conflict as part of the Jacobite Rebellion and is a pretty town straddling the lock system.

The cruise was pretty ordinary and we didn't see Nessie, but we got some interesting info on searches for Nessie and some possible real world options that could explain sonar records that suggest something big(ish) is down there.

After the cruise we thought we'd head to visit the Urquhart Castle on the banks of Loch Ness, but being a Sunday, we couldn't get tickets as it was chockers. Disappointing, but one of the risks of touring in popular tourist areas on weekends.

Our alternative was to head to Inverness and visit Culloden - the site of the battle that effectively ended the Jacobite Rebellion and Bonnie Prince Charlie. We had a fascinating tour of the site and then wandered around ourselves before heading through the museum. It's one of those inflection points in history that could easily have led to a very different world with a Catholic king of Britain and much closer ties to France.