Inverness and Dornie (WARNING: MAY CONTAIN TRACES OF OTTER)

Inverness is flat. I was surprised. I'd gotten quite used to hills. I was also surprised by the size of the town, a proper little city with many a shop and suburbs stretching out wide both towards the firth and towards Loch Ness. The loch is a little distance from the city, and the body of water that runs through the Inverness is the River Ness. You could guess that much from the name, as 'inver' essentially means the mouth of the river. The water was very high from all the rain, which continued to fall in bits above the usual grass level on the banks, and the foot bridge was very wobbly.

Oh no. A loch ness monster emerging from the river
onto one of the islands. What will I do.

However, it was very beautiful along the river. The green of all the plants, except the yellow daffodils, indicated exactly the time of year, for it was the weekend of May Day, that place half-way between the equinoxes, and more significantly for the general public, I imagine, a bank holiday weekend. I walked down along the river's edge to the little islands accessible by bridges that join them to each other and to the banks. The water flowed quickly either side. I plucked a leaf that I think, from its spikiness, was holly and took it back to my room.

I stayed at a Bed and Breakfast called Mardon Guest House, which was very nice, and which provided incredible breakfasts (bonus: food locally sourced and organic where possible). Full cooked Scotch breakfasts, if you wanted, or salmon and scrambled eggs on a potato cake, or pancakes, or a bazillion other delicious sundry things. We also had complimentary homemade ginger shortbreads in the room beside the beverage sachets. Oh. They were good. Jessie joined me in Inverness for two nights. Both nights, we went out for dinner and filled our bellies well. The first night, I had smoked Scottish salmon on potato and for dessert some Scottish delicacy called a cranachan (whipped cream, whiskey, berries, and apparently oats though I couldn't really get their texture for all the cream) served annoyingly in a wine glass. It's hard to lick a wine glass clean. After that we went out to a pub called Hootanany (my computer wishes to correct this to 'Anthony') for whiskey (me) and beer (Jessie). I did in fact try some of her beer, which was honey flavoured and the first beer I've tried that I would consider drinking a full half pint of.

There was a band playing there with bagpipes and an accordion  They have a name, but alas, all I remember was that they came from one of the islands and that we had a lot of fun listening to them (after the stag party left). Their own music was by far preferable to rehashed bagpipe-ified "crowd pleasers" (such as 'The Gambler,' and the most-dreaded 'Brown Eyed Girl' which ought to be shot and its corpse nailed to the bar door as a warning). We also encountered a Georgian and a Serbian who wanted to know if Jessie was from Holland, and seemed rather disappointed to find out that she wasn't. They didn't ask what I was. I don't think they even saw me, standing right next to her, conversing with her every now and then.

The Loch Ness

Urquhart Castle

We took a tour package the next day, to Loch Ness, Urquhart Castle, and the Loch Ness Visitor Centre. We were given a historical commentary on the bus out to the loch, as the area has a deal of significant Scottish history. The loch itself is about 37 kilometers long and 230 meters deep at its deepest. Because of its depth, it is the greatest volume of water in Scotland. I believe our driver said that it contains more water than if all the other bodies of water (probably not including the ocean) were put together. The length was quite apparent and impressive, and we took a half-hour trip over it to Urquhart Castle. We looked about the ruins, some parts offering shelter and a lot not, and quite a view out over the water from a tower that stands. The castle is a lot bigger than it seems at first, and was also deliberately ruined to stop those Jacobites getting a hold of it. Speaking of ruining things (no, it wasn't that bad, just made a nice segway), it so happened that those the Georgian and Serbian from the pub were on the same tour as us (they bought their friends this time), and were still determined to ignore me as much as was possible. We both largely ignored them, Jessie declining their kind offer of joining them for coffee.

Enigmatic.

The final stop of the tour, the Exhibition Centre, was very strange. It has a high rating by the Scottish Tour Board. I'm not sure why. In fact, after going there, I'm just plain not sure. It has six spacious rooms of question marks and enigmas, with a single screen to present a somewhat disjointed (I felt) history of the loch's monster and the search for it. Occasionally objects would light up - a plastic fossil plesiosaur, two mannequins with binoculars, the interior of a boat apparently involved in a deep scan. After the rooms had displayed their 'evidence,' by which we were supposed to fulfill the responsibility we had been charged with of being "naturalist and detective, judge and jury," I still felt left with a powerful sense of enigma, a giant glowing question mark - what the hell was that? Emerging from the exhibition things got stranger. The room before us was filled with Loch Ness Monster and dinosaur toys of all shades and sizes. There were even mirrors to exaggerate their number. They were on the floor, in buckets, on shelves, on racks. Stepping outside, you discovered yourself in a miniature village, largely abandoned in the light rain, of shops. We wandered around. We wanted to leave. Finally we got to.

Save me....

We shopped in the afternoon, only a preamble to the main event of dinner at a wonderful pub above the river. I tried haggis. It was most delicious. I tried a 'Highland mess' for dessert. It had more whipped cream than meringue base. It made my brain hurt. The next morning we wandered down to Craig Phadraigh park, which was a pretty wooded area that went up a hill, and then down to the firth and over the railway to the end of the canal, where the ribs of the Loch Ness Monster lay. We passed a sign beside a tidal area where a girl called Jade's words declared that when the tide was low you could see the witch's grave. Jessie departed; I read in the graveyard where earlier I had chased rabbits until the rain took me back to the B&B which had a roof designed well to prevent books from getting wet, even if they are substandard things picked up simply for a setting in the Scottish Islands.

A tree residing in the Craig Phadraigh park

The spine and ribs of the Loch Ness Monster

Dornie is a small village probably best known for Eilean Donan castle that sits right near it. The bus ride from Inverness to Dornie Bridge is about 2 hours, and is on the Portree route. It would have been shorter to visit when I was on Skye, but I decided to spend my time there on the island. The scenery certainly made it worthwhile for me, despite the rain and low cloud. It passes through those gorgeous steep stretches of land I love, with thin streams forced into being waterfalls down their sides, and with rivers racing past and flat grey lochs beside. The road passes through the Kintail area, which is MacKenzie country.

Eilean Donan itself was once a castle of the MacKenzies, and their allied Macraes. It's been restored by Macraes in modern days, and, though it may seem a little off kilter, I think the castle's more important to me as a film site of 'Highlander' than as a place of family history. My family history is in the land, not what is a pretty but perhaps our-touristed castle. I did, however, feel a moment of pride on seeing the Seaforth stag's head on its sheild on the wall and above the fireplace.

Connor MacLeod: the sultry Highlander from France
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From the castle's wee isle

The castle felt a little odd to me, partly because of the scaffolding I imagine, but also because of the display inside. I preferred the bridge that leads across to it. The castle's rooms were all furnished, and the displays mostly seemed to be Macrae relics - a family museum, in some respects, with little of the castle and area's older history (though there were a few older items, and some black and white photos tucked to one side of the making of 'Highlander'). The kitchen display included model items of food, a few model servants (one poor maid has perpetually been sentenced to the moment of horror as she tries to catch her toppling dishes) and some model Macraes. Despite the rain, there were tourists a-plenty.

The best thing about Eilean Donan is by far its setting. Three sea lochs join at its point on what is a little island when the tide is low. Their waters press against hills, or against strips of land. The colours had that same subtle gorgeousness of this area of the Highlands, and with the weather they seemed fresh and newly found, clean browns and deep golds, rich purples and greens. Dornie is a little further along from the castle and back off the main road, and doesn't have a view of the stone building, but in such land it has views that are superior. I believe it is my favourite landscape so far. Mist cleared for a moment and showed peaks; the loch reflected the village's single row of houses and its guardian hills; a river rolls fast beyond the end of the road. And there are those fantastic colours always.

Dornie also gave me the delight of more otters - two of them, playfully murdering some manner of edible delicacy in front of me while I ate my own lunch. I actually only noticed them when I stood up to leave, which then prevented me from leaving for some time. I considered trying to sneak closer, but on the open land felt that sneaking wouldn't be successful and contended myself to watch from a distance. I also saw a beautiful and suspicious heron, geese, some curious grey birds, and a sudden splash with an impressive noise accompanying it. The culprit did not reveal itself.