Highland Fling in Inverness

Everything in Inverness is uphill or downhill
. At the bottom is the River Ness connected to the Caldedonian Canal and locks which lead to Loch Ness while the sea is to the east. Bike along the river or walk to the main shopping areas around High Street where baskets hang with flowers at every doorstep and tartain plaid comes in just as many colors.
Street revelers tend to be the historic kind...wildmen in kilts telling stories of massacre at Culloden or youngsters doing a highland fling to the music of a bagpipe.

Use Inverness as a base for trips to:
Loch Ness - visit the ruins of Urquhart Castle and see the Loch Ness Monster Museum with Jacobite Cruises.
Cawdor Castle - rumored to be the site of Duncan's death by MacBeth. You'll need more than 2 hours to visit.
Clava Cairns - Neolithic henge and Cairn site.
Further trips could include the Cairngorm (don't forget the reindeer station) and Ben Nevis Mountain parks, Beauly Priory, Culloden Battlefield, or Interlochy Castle.

Quick Tips:

We joined Puffin Express Tours at the Visitor Information Center where one of the owners (Sinclair Dunnett) took us to Cawdor Castle and the Clava Cairns for a very reasonable rate that you'll treasure once you consider Sinclair's tales of the area. He is (my kind of) a character! He and his wife offer a wide variety of tours across the entire highlands. The tourist Information Center can help you by describing the tours and will even arrange the booking for you. www.puffinexpress.co.uk/; phone: 01463717181

You will see many flyers advertising the "Scottish Showtime" as the oldest running live Scottish show for . If you like lounge lizards in kilts in a community gym room...this show is for you.

In this time of high security, you will find that many train stations will not hold your luggage over during the day while you tour about.

Best Way To Get Around:

Inverness is well connected by rail, boat, bus, and air. The visitor Information Center will save you time if you need to make any kind of travel or tourist reservation across the whole North of Scotland. We found them to be very knowledgable and kind.
Once you're out and about in town; let your feet do the walking UNLESS you just arrived by train with luggage. THEN I would suggest taking the cabs located out the main station doors, to the street, and turn left. You will see the cab stand infront of you.

The Kinkell house and the Redcliffe hotel are both owned/managed by Claire Wallace. They are located up the hill from the train station, so I recommend a cab for your luggage. it is about a 5 minute downhill walk to town and shopping along row houses brimming with gardens. A lovely walk!

If the Redcliffe is hosting a large group in the restaurant, you may prefer to stay at the more sedate Kinkell house located about 2 blocks away. We arrived to a wedding reception with many men in full kilts looking rather dandy! Within a few moments we were invited to join the group...folks are friendly here!

The boys were drinking Scotch (neat) which is a patriotic thing to do. A little warning to you, me lass! A "wee dram" in Scotland can bring a large amount of trouble! The first thing is that "Wee" can be mighty large! Remind me to tell you stories about kilts and sporrans some other time!

Right now we return to the Kinkell house-- a charming 2 storey red stone Victorian with climbing Ivy and blooming gardens.

All of the rooms are decorated within a theme of dark blue, green, and white with many tartain bed covers or border trim. Some rooms share a very nice hall bath while others are ensuite. There are various bed configurations from a single twin room to double beds with twins at $25 per person, including a full Scottish breakfast.

Don''t forget to fill out your menu before you head off to bed. You can grab one more cup of tea from the ever present pot in the cozy living room where you can sit close to the fireplace.

Open April-Sept. Mon-Sat. 9:30-5:15. Entry $3.50

Urquhart sits on a peninsula about midpoint in the loch where those approaching by boat could be seen far away. This castle sums up centuries of Scottish history and has become an icon. There has been a fortress here (although probably of wood in the beginning) since Iron age times. The first written words about the castle were from a Celtic Monk in the autobiography of St. Columba who visited the castle around the year 800. This is also where documentation of the Loch Ness monster appears for the first time.
The castle became a chess piece in the centeries long fight between the English and the Scots until it was blown-up by the English during the Jacobite times.

Today, there is a huge renovation project for a new visitor center. Although necessary, the metal fencing takes away from photography from the parking areas. The walk down to the castle is a bit uneven and fairly steep if one were to return uphill.

What you see are ruins of this once immense stonghold. The 5 storey tower is what will catch your eye, and you can wander up the spiral staircase to the top if the area isn't too crowded with tourists. This is where the Laird would have had his private chambers.

Wander about and visit the blacksmith and Iron forgers area in the 2 layers of cellars. One of the outer compounds had a corn drying room that was interesting where a lower wood fire would slowly dry the corn resting above. There is also a foundation for the chapel that once stood nearby. Head towards the boat docks to see a huge catapult that would have lobbed nasty things at boats passing by. The dock area is another place where you can get a good picture looking back towards the ancient tower.

I must admit that I groaned when I heard that we were going to this museum. But I was in for a pleasnat surprise, and need to apologise for my Doubting Thomas attitude.

Dedicated in 1999, this is a multi-media marvel! The way the lines weave about moving groups in managable numbers in a manner that won't loose the interest of the most" Attention Deficient" in the crowd....reminds me of something.....
How about " DISNEY ON THE LOCH"?
this museum has flyers in 17 languages if you happen to be in an integrated group but if you arrive with the French tour group...do not be depressed, Mon Chere! Of course we have this movie production in all languages!

You walk into small rooms that make you feel as if you are under the water of the loch while movie and laser productions explain the flora and fauna as well as the movement of the plates of the earth.

The first documentation of the monster was during an incident with St. Columbria about 800 A.D. when he soothed( or was it threatened?) the beast who killed one man. The beast was called a " Kelpie" at that time and was a horse-like monster. One of the rooms in the museum talks about all the hoaxes that have occured and how they were done. It also shows cases that can not be explained....

The next room you enter has a submarine with a ripple of water that appears above your head. In this area you will learn that surges of water and gas bubble from a deep rift below causing disturbances at the surface. Is this what Nessie is? A bubble of gas surging to the surface?

You'll also learn that the low food production in the loch wouldn't support any respectable monster.

The presentation goes into great detail explaining the scientific studies that have been done in the loch and what they have found. Just be prepared for the massive Nessie gift shops as you exit...I told you they learned well from Disney!

It is cheaper to book a tour on the Jacobite River Cruises to Loch Ness than it is to take public transportation roundtrip to Drumnadrochit to see the castle and the Monster Museum.
Since the docks are located at Fairy Hill outside of town, the company sends a van to pickup tourists at the central Visitor Information Center and the fees are included.
You can purchase a one way journey or roundtrip. We chose the coach and cruise tour that went to Urquhart Castle and the Monster Museum. I recommend taking the 10:00 am tour rather than the 2:00. If you are going to have any sun at all, it will usually be in the morning or very close to sunset. By noon you can expect clouds...this is the highlands after all!

You will ride the boat one way and take the van the other. If the sun is shining, you may want to grab that boat for the trip out. Your first stop will be the castle. The only difficult part will be climbing the hill to the parking lot to get the van to the Monster Museum.
If this is a concern to you, then take the van first which will take you to the Monster Museum and then the castle (with a downhill walk). You'll meet the boat at the pier for your return journey through the beautiful Caledonian Canal to Inverness.

The fun begins as you approach the real drawbridge and you look around expecting Lancelot to come riding up on a white horse.

The oldest parts of the castle are from 1300. In Shakespeare's play" MacBeth", there are references of the "Thane of Cawdor" and the death of Duncan was rumored to have occured here. In real life, Duncan was killed by MacBeth in 1040 during a battle, and in 1057 his son (Malcom) got his revenge by killing his fathers murderer. This was 300 years before Cawdor castle was built.

The late Earl of Cawdor made plaques for each room where various items are explained...often with great "tongue in cheek" humor. I would have liked him! Each room is intimate....yet very elegant. It would be wonderful to walk through rooms sporting famous portraits and to have them be ancestors of yours!

The red bedroom called the " tapestry room" (for all the silk tapestrys) contains a velvet canopied marriage bed that I wished I could have hid in and spent the night.

The thorn tree room (old guard room) was built around what was believed to be a hawthorn tree. I read somewhere that a Hawthorn tree was used for Christ's cross. When this tree was radiocarbon dated it was from 1372 and turned out to be a holly. Behind the tree is a dungeon with a plaque that explains that it was well used at one time.

Head outside now to the many gardens! The oldest one is the walled garden with the maze made out of holly. It was closed off, since the 500 year old plants are showing their age. Boxwood shrubs form the backbone of plantings in forms of stars and other geometric patterns while rose's bloomed with purple salvia and the royal Scottish thistle in some odd forms such as the black thistle. Arborvitae form walls that open to hidden slate floored enclosures while water flows, spurts or ripples along from bird baths to fountains. The kitchen garden had nut trees and an esparieled fruit tree grown along an ancient stone wall.

The path behind the castle leads to the wild garden. You know you are approaching when you pass the largest red Japanese maple tree I have ever seen and enter the blue door. Feeling a bit like Alice in Wonderland, I wondered why I have trouble growing this maple in the Midwest, when this area of Scotland is above the latitude of Moscow? Cross the bridge over the bubbling peat colored stream and you'll run into a.....California Redwood? It must have been planted several hundred years ago. There are walking trails here that are 1.3 km-5 km. long.

The last garden is from the 1700's, and is to your left as you approach the castle. Perennials are in constant bloom and butterfly's flew about. Colors splashed about my vision while I roamed in this real life Monet painting.

These Cairns date back to 4,000 years ago and are a group of passage graves that follow the river. Clava is unusual in that it is surrounded by a human-sized stone henge that appears to have mounded underground chambers that radiate to the stones.

The center is called a Ring Cairn and has no obvious entrance. Large boulders hold the stacked stones in place for a 60 ft. circle. The East and West cairns both have passageways that were once covered and aligned with the winter solstice. The sun hits odd shaped stones along the back wall at that time.

Take some time to walk slowly around the exterior looking for the ground-out cup marks on many of the boulders. The reason for this is unknown. Perhaps the shape is what was important, or the ground rock may have been added to body paints, or maybe it was a form of punishment.

The use of the cairns isn't really known. If they were used as burial chambers, why weren't bodies found? People didn't live here, because garbage from everyday life should have been found. Whenever archeologists don't know, they say that it is CEREMONIAL....so let's say that these cairns were a religious center of some kind.

I think that these people were traders with the older race on Orkney and "borrowed" some of the religious ceremonies. After visiting both sites, you can see that these cairns are more rough in construction and appearance.