The Loch and Beyond - More than Just a Legend...

Having made the journey up into the highlands of Scotland several times before, this time I had a pretty good idea of what to expect with the weather, and so rain coat and umbrella packed, we headed north for a long weekend in Inverness-shire.

The area around Loch Ness is so well known, and so renowned for its myth and legend that it brings a lot of tourists to its doorstep. But like most places that are frequented by tourists, you only have to go a little bit further off the beaten path to find the really great treats the area has to offer.

Though I had been to the clouded and blue hills of the Inverness-shire highlands before, it has been to do what many tourist do on their trip up - to see Loch Ness and be able to at least go home and say 'No, I didn't see the monster. Got a great shot of the Loch, though!' This time I was looking for a bit more, and with just a little added driving time, it wasn't hard to find.

We left with no real agenda other than to better explore this area of the Scottish highlands and what it had to offer. A large part of our intended trip was originally the city of Inverness itself. However, (and hopefully this will save some other like-minded travellers the time and planning we wasted) we were only in the outskirts of Inverness for a few moments before we realized it was not to be a part of the trip we had scheduled.

I've had several people tell me that Inverness was an inconsequential sort of town, but I had assumed that to mean there was no great night life, or perhaps not a good club scene. Known as the Capitol of the Highlands, I had pictured a rather beautiful little city with lots to see on foot. The reality, however, seemed to be just what people said of it. It's just another city, and not even a good one. So unless you have something specific planned for Inverness, it's worth giving it a miss. The country side and the surrounding towns all along Loch Ness are a much better way of spending your time while visiting the Highlands. We drove into Inverness, and within 5 minutes decided just to eat there and be on our way.

Quick Tips:

As is the case with much of Scotland, the most useful tips I can offer are generally to do with the weather. The highlands in particular are very weather oriented, and as is the case with all travel, if you go knowing what to expect it can make even a less than satisfactory situation a little bit nicer.

So plan for rain. Hope for the best, but assume there will be rain. Take a rain coat and sweater, regardless of the time of year, or how hot it may have been when you left Edinburgh or Glasgow. You may luck out, and if the sun comes out you could have beautiful, blistering sunshine. But even so - you will almost certainly need that rain coat at some point.

And this is certainly not all bad. The highlands is a rugged landscape that benefits greatly in mood and atmosphere from the dark blue low hanging clouds that dip in and out of the hill tops, and the best pictures you are likely to get come from the amazing cloud formations and bits of light that shine through to the truly astonishing colours of heather and grass.

As for avoiding the tourist trail, I discovered on this trip the south side of Loch Ness is the place to go. Most of the tourist route goes north up past Fort Augustus and alongside the Loch towards Inverness. Though there is some nice scenery in this direction (and Ft Augustus a nice town to stop into for lunch) the more rugged and less travelled side of the Loch, the south side, is well worth the added driving time.

Here there are secluded waterfalls, often swollen from the rains, some beautiful winding roads along side the Loch, as well as some far superior photo opportunities than you get on the North side, with far fewer cars and interruptions. Going this way also affords you the chance to hit the famous Scottish Whisky trail and some of the fantastic local distilleries, which are well worth a visit while in Scotland.

If you are in this area, there are some wonderful - and very secluded guest houses on this side of the Loch if scenery and peace and quiet are what you are looking for. And best of all their staff are often very knowledgeable about the area and can be of great assistance to you.

Best Way To Get Around:

There are quite a few choices in transportation in this area; all depending on what it is that you hope to see and get out of you're time in Inverness-shire. Despite the vast open expanses that begin just beyond Stirling where the Highlands begin, actual drive time around the highlands is remarkably short. If you don't stop too often to gape at scenery and take photos you can make it up from Edinburgh or Glasgow in about 3 hours. You can, of course fly into Inverness itself, and then drive south as well - saving you even further time if this is the main place in which you hope to spend your time in Scotland.

Buses are quite good and not too expensive in Scotland, and you can easily get a bus to Inverness or many of the places in-between from either Edinburgh or Glasgow, though that does significantly cut down on your sight seeing capabilities, of which there is much to see. Most of it is simply scenery, but it's highly likely you will want to take it at you're own pace if possible, as the scenery can change so rapid and dramatically within a short space of time.
There are also many tour buses that offer pretty good rates for tours of Loch Ness leaving from the centre of Edinburgh on the Royal Mile and coming back at the end of the day. These trips run from £20-£40 and can be purchased from the many shops that advertise them on Edinburgh's Royal Mile.

The best option is to drive, simply so that you can take the highlands at you're own pace. It is some where that should be seen slowly, with lots of stops at layovers which are well marked and often. Even with the pricey-ness of rentals and fuel in Britain, it's still worth it.

But if you're feeling up to it, walking around Scotland is a bit pass time for locals and visitors alike, and the highlands is ever full of hikers with packs making their way up into the hills. If you feel quite ambitious, you can always head north on foot, or even cycling. If you happen to have or can rent a motorcycle, the highland roads are wonderful for it with their long expanses of near empty road and breathtaking scenery.

One of the great benefits of being the spouse of someone who works for a travel company is that you find out about hotels that you may otherwise have never have heard of.  I'm sure - had I simply gone looking online myself - I would have wound up at a cheap hostel or bed and breakfast in Inverness, which would have certainly been far inferior to the stay we had at The Grouse and Trout hotel The Steadings.

In a picture perfect and utterly remote location on the less travelled south side of Loch Ness, this is a hotel I will not have enough space to grant all the praise that is necessary.

Though not on the cheapest end of the scale in hotels and B&Bs, for a beautifully kept and wonderful location in the middle of stunning scenery in the midst of summer, £95 per night is not overly extravagant.

Never in all my time in hotels, B&Bs or hostels have I ever encountered such friendly or helpful staff. After arriving near disk and taking a damp stroll through the surrounding country side and photographing the dramatic hills and soft rolling landscape around it, we made our way into the lounge and shared a local Scottish Thistle Ale - recommended by the extremely friendly hosts.

Remote hardly does the location justice, as you drive about half an hour off the A9 through windy one track roads that lead deeper and deeper in the highlands around Loch Ness. And as wonderful as this is (you don't exactly travel to the Scottish Highlands for its nightlife) do be aware of it and take care of what you may need to buy or eat before you go.

The hotel does offer dinner, and though I have heard it highly praised through the travel community - it is a bit pricy at £27.50 per person for a 3 course meal. Not bad for what you get, but if you don't want to splash out quite that much, it may be worth popping into Inverness or a surrounding town for dinner before heading out towards the hotel.

Once there, though, you are free to relax and enjoy it to the full. The rooms are beautiful and very well thought out. It is very easy to tell the management in this hotel have put thought into what their patrons may want or need, and all the little touches are there that make a nice stay.

There is also a great little bar and communal area with books and magazines and spectacular views of the hills outside. Either chat with other travellers, or just relax with a local ale and watch the plentiful wildlife.

The Steadings is also perfectly located for exploring the more remote south side of Loch Ness. Just mention this to the hosts and they will be more than helpful in filling you in on all the little unknown sights and must do's which will greatly heighten your experience.

Taking the A9 up from Edinburgh via Perth on your way to Inverness doesn't exactly offer you the most extravagant choice of restaurants and places to eat along the way. It does, of course, well make up for this downfall by the scenery and the remoteness of the area you will be driving through - but it is definitely worth mentioning that unless you want to stop at some little pub in a village along the way for a pub lunch, pack your own or wait until you get farther north.

Staying on the more remote and harder to reach south side of Loch Ness on this trip - we opted to head into Inverness city to get a bite to eat and maybe do some sightseeing before heading down to the hotel for the night.
It became very apparent very quickly, however, that actual 'sightseeing' in Inverness was going to be difficult. We arrived in on a Friday night, just at rush hour in a drizzling summer rain to a city that turned out to be a lot more factories and warehouses than I had expected. This, as it turned out, is a city in its simplest form, and there seemed very little in the way of relaxing sightseeing worth doing - when all of the Scottish Highlands lay at our feet. We opted to have a meal and head out.

As Friday night was kicking off, and we really wanted to get out to the hotel to do some walking before the night settled in, we went for a safe choice. Yes, it is true the Filling Station is a franchise and a bit of a themed restaurant; but these things do have their place and a reliably good meal at a reasonable price which was precisely what we were after.

The location was good - just about a two-minute walk from the train station and about a minute from the local shopping centre which, as far as I could tell, offered about the best parking opportunity in the city. We parked underground in a reasonably-priced spot and walked up to the restaurant.

Even for 530 on a Friday night we didn't have to wait for a table, and though the restaurant was beginning to fill did not have to wait long for service or food. The waiting staff were pretty good, and friendly and the food was nice.

I would be hard pressed to rave about it, but I was very pleased. For about £10 we both had really nice meals (my travelling companion had a Bison burger and I had a chicken stuffed with Haggis, so a bit of local flavour despite the American theme) and yes, the American theme was a bit nice as well from someone who's been away from home so long.

The portions are a good size, and the prices very reasonable. I could find nothing to complain about.

It is a very safe bet to sustain you on your trip.

This is a rather odd little place, and I slithered a bit about whether or not I should write a review on it or not. In the end, I decided I would so that I could give folk a heads up on one particular thing.

The Red Squirrel is just a small little café directly across the street from the beginning of the walk down to the Falls of Foyers, and most likely where you will park your car while you head down the trail.

It’s a very nice-looking little place, and will most likely tempt you in, as it did us, for a little bit of refreshments before you hit the road again. There is a nice wooden patio deck outside that - even on the gray day with drizzling cold rain seemed almost inviting. The inside is very tidy and neat with a few café type tables about the place and an interesting looking array of drinks and light snacks.

There's a lot of photography on the wall (which of course got my attention) and so I decided to browse amongst the pictures of the local area while my husband bought us some drinks.

On the surface, a nice - easy to recommend little place. But I hesitate to do so, and for two little reasons.

The first is that the man who runs the café seems to have an over abundant fascination with red squirrels. I find it hard to understand this local fascination with them - but this proprietor is not alone in that. What made it stand out (aside from all the red squirrel photos that covered half the café) was that he sat next to a computer watching a relay from a camera down the hill pointed at a nest. I have to say he seemed a bit annoyed that customers pulled him away from this viewing of potential squirrels.
That - however - may well have just been my take on it. Maybe there was nothing odd in it at all.

The other thing is more straightforward. Don't order a milkshake. We both got one as a bit of a treat despite the chill day hoping for a good old fashioned milk shake as you some times get in these out of the way cafés. What we got was a store-bought powdered, flavoured milk that had been whisked a bit. And it cost us about £1.50 each.

So yes - I can not speak for the food, and you will be amused by the place if you are as intrigued by red squirrels as they are. But don't order a milkshake.

Just a few minutes walk from the little town of Foyers on the south side of Loch Ness you find a wonderful surprising sight called the Falls of Foyers.

One of the many sights I would have missed entirely without the generous help and guidance of our hotel hostess at The Steadings. We had planned to leave our remote hotel on the south side and head straight for the tip at Ft Augusts and then make our way up the north side where most of the tourist generally go.

But after a bit of looking at the map and seeing just how much there was actually to see on this side of the famous loch - we decided to head down its winding back roads to see for ourselves. Only a few moments from the shore of the loch you come to Foyers, a very small little settlement consisting of a little shop and cafe directly across from the walk down to the falls.

I admit that I am often hesitant about going to see waterfalls that I have never heard of. I should probably - as a photographer with an adventurous spirit - get very excited about the prospect of a hike through the hills to find a secluded fall. But in reality I rarely do get very excited, as so often these little falls are an area's only claim to fame and not really worth the time to get out to see them.

This one, however, left me extremely pleasantly surprised. The first thing you encounter heading down the somewhat steep, but very walkable steps towards the falls are signs and cameras making you aware of the local red squirrel inhabitants. Once an animal that filled the Scottish forest, now it is quite rare, and as you will see by the local's reaction - people get very excited when they do spot one.

Walking sites reckon you should allow 1.5 hours to walk the falls. I am assuming this allows for time to stop and view both the top and bottom view of the falls, and walk slowly back up. It’s not a hard walk, though it does at first appear rather steep.

The falls, themselves though are beautiful. The first bit of luck the heavy rain afforded us was a very full and rushing waterfall that made for some wonderful photos. The path and steps are well made and though they can be very slippery in the often wet weather - even out of shape this isn't a trying climb. It’s also worth seeing both ends of the falls. Both the top and bottom view offer some wonderful photo opportunities, and the surrounding countryside and forest are wonderful in their own right.

This is a stop well worth making in your time in Inverness-shire. It’s a bit off the beaten path, but then most things in the highlands are.

In the small town of Dalwhinnie, just off the A9 in the very heart of the Scottish Highlands, you come across the picturesque Dalwhinnie Distillery.

A trip to Scotland is hardly complete without a visit to the creating place of its world famous whisky (in case you're wondering, the spelling there is correct. Whisky made in Scotland is spelled with out the 'e' which is one of the distinctions between Scottish and Irish whisky. The other is in the distillation process, of which you will learn more about on the guided tour.)

After having made several trips here, and lived in the country for almost 5 years, I've been more than a little shamefaced about not having been to one myself. As we were heading right through the heart of the Scottish whisky trail on our way north towards Inverness, it was just a matter of picking which one to see.

Many visitors to the Highlands make a point of doing the entire whisky trail - and information can be easily found about all the distilleries on the official trail. They are also all easily marked along the road way.

I, however, just wanted to make a stop at one on this trip north - and because of its unique flavour, distinctive of the heather thick area from which it is distilled, we pulled off the A9 at Dalwhinnie and drove up for a tour of the distillery.

What we didn't realize when we arrived, is that we had picked what is the highest distillery in Scotland at 1,073 feet above sea level. It is also, because of its location, one of the coldest places on the British Isles and the distillery itself is used by the weather service. In the middle of July we got out of the car in coats, and so I have no doubt it would be extremely cold in the winter.

As it's the only distillery in Scotland I have visited, I can't compare it to the better known distilleries (like Glenfiddich or Glenmorangie) but I'm very pleased I picked this one. In a beautiful setting and location, it's a small, friendly distillery run by a total of 7 people. (I found that figure quite remarkable.)

The tour is very pleasant and informative, and well worth the £5 charge. (Which includes a £3 coupon for any 70 cl bottle of whisky.) Very well maintained, and well presented, this was a great stop and a very good whisky to sample as well. Known for its delicate taste, Dalwhinnie is a very warm whisky and much less harsh for the non-drinker than some of the more easterly brands. You get a small sample tasting (which in a whisky is more than enough!) after the tour, and they have a very nice gift shop as well.

Often hesitant about 'tourist stops’ I was very pleased I made this one a part of my trip. A worthwhile experience to undertake in Scotland.
Open from 9am to 4:30pm, Monday to Friday

I can hardly review the Scottish area of Inverness-shire with out mentioning its most famous sight - Loch Ness.

The highlands, as a rule, are best discovered by car, bike, or foot (another words, not in public transport, or by tour) but if you are limited to the tour trail - you will have no trouble finding your way to the lengthy Loch running from the heart of Inverness to Ft Augustus to see for yourself if you believe its legend.

There are many tours and buses, leaving directly from Edinburgh city centre to Loch Ness, and generally for a very reasonable price. For around £20 you can usually get a tour up for the day, with a few other stops to important highland sites. A good deal if you have to do a tour.

But I am writing this particular review to focus on the less visited (and so less touristy) side of Loch Ness.

I should probably begin my clarifying the terminology. If you are asking directions or specifics about the area from any local, they will point you in the direction of the "south side" of Loch Ness. I have to admit I myself was a bit confused by this, as Loch Ness runs virtually north to south. But what is generally regarded as the 'south' side is what may look on a map like the east side. So don't be confused, you're on the right track!

Coming up the A9 from Edinburgh or Glasgow and past Perth, you pass some of the most beautiful and remote scenery in Scotland. For such a small area (compared to places like the US and Australia) Scotland's landscape is amazingly diverse. Though it may only take about 3 or 4 hours to drive clear across from east to west - anyone will tell you the difference in terrain is huge.

It is the A82 heading up from Ft William that most travellers seem to take on their visit to the legendary loch - and though there are some great little pit stops along this way (I recommend Ft Augustus for lunch) if you want a more secluded and quiet view to set up your binoculars, then venture along the south side.

Instead head up the A9 which does not run along side the loch. You will need to detour into it along one of the little one track roads (I highly recommend you take a map) and allow at least half an hour, 45 minutes to reach the loch.

But the extra time is worth it. The views are astounding and as peaceful and remote as you could hope for. Pick your quiet lay by to take photos of the loch, or just sit and wait for mysterious ripples in the water.

If you are looking for sporting events and boating on the loch, you may want to keep to the north side. But if it's pure scenery, then the south side is certainly worth the extra effort.