Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Loch Ness

From Edinburgh we headed North. In to snow storms, heavy fog, rain and ice. Tegan and I share driving. At one stage we veered off the main road to find a toilet (to no avail) and ended up on a one laned road with 20cm of snow on it. I almost ran in to three cars on separate occasions but thankfully even though the brakes weren’t working, the other cars were cautious and could veer around my snaking moves.

After a long and scary journey (that we wouldn’t have taken had we not had accommodation booked that night), we arrived at Loch Ness. The drive was scary but it was bloody beautiful. And the Loch is amazing! It’s one long, straight lake that follows a glacial scar in the earth that follows a fault line – which is why it’s as straight as a ruler.

Our accommodation is amazing. We’re out of Inverness (the main town in the Highlands), along Loch Ness. We’re just outside a village with an unpronounceable name on a quiet road. The house is beautiful – stone and old. The triple room was too noisy due to a boiler problem, so we’ve got two rooms between the three of us which is great. We get breakfast in the morning which is a hot breakfast of local produce and home made, AMAZING raspberry jam. We asked to buy some, but it’s her own jam so we can’t. Boo!

We cruised along the Loch today on a fancy boat. 12 pounds each for an hour trip that wasn’t overly exciting. It was warm though, and we got to see a lovely castle and the Loch from a different perspective. We didn’t see Nessie which isn’t a surprise. It was rainy and shitty today – tomorrow will be snow. We’ve got to be flexible with our plans as the southern areas have been getting 100+mile/hour winds which is doing damage like a cyclone would. We’ll have to try and miss those, as well as the snow storms around. Sounds trickier than it is. We’ll just take it easy and stay where ever we get to. No hurry!

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