OK – enough with the Highlander references already. The fact is I had come to Inverness for two reasons – for the tacky tourist trap of the Loch Ness Monster (which was likely to be on par with the Santa village) and so I could visit the Scottish Highlands. And yes I know Inverness only barely qualifies as being in the Highlands. And those that have been to the Orkney Isles will likely scoff at my foray into the Highlands but I am traveling at a fairly fast pace and you’ve got to be impressed I actually went to Inverness.

 

My arrival in Inverness was less than spectacular. I had the booking for the hostel in my hand. Unfortunately it had neither the address nor phone number for the hostel on it. For some reason I had pictured Inverness as a little village on the edge of Loch Ness – probably because of the pic of the quaint little hostel I had booked into – the only one I could find. It had only dorm rooms, which I wasn’t really looking forward to after the early start and all the traveling I had done. It was 8pm when I arrived and I had been seeing deep snow in the dark out of the train window for the past couple of hours.

 

Inverness was granted city status in the 1990s so it’s not really a village. But of course at 8pm on a Wednesday night in winter, the tourist office is closed. I found a map dispenser, hoping the map would have accommodation listings. It ate two pound and didn’t give me anything resembling a map. I had no map, no internet to check the address and no phone number.  I noticed the train ticketing office was open and hoped someone in there would be helpful. The lady was very helpful – she gave me a map with the hostel marked on it, and directions – apparently I had a 20 minute walk ahead of me. The only problem was, when I arrived, it clearly wasn’t the right hostel. She had sent me to the town’s YHA which looked large enough to be a university accommodation building. Not the quaint cottage promised by the website. There was only one thing for it- for the first time on my trip, I phoned home to get someone to look at the website for me. [‘Michael Caine’ – Madness – The old school movie star agreed to record his voice for this track because his daughter was a huge Madness fan].

 

It was 7am and my knight in shining shorts was a bit thrown by my call but got up to help. It transpired that my chosen destination was about two and a half miles from the train station in a different direction to the one I had come. I trudged back to the station and on the way I decided to see if the hotel I had passed near the station had a room for a decent price. It was cold, it was late and I figured I was going to have to catch a cab out to the hostel and possibly back as well. I had only paid about $20 for the bed so in the scheme of things it wasn’t going to be a huge loss. It was one of the best decisions I have made on the trip.

 

The Highlands Hotel was your typical UK country hotel – large bathroom, comfy bed (king single or maybe even a small double) with a doona, and a telly. And they gave me a room for 30 pounds (which included a full Scottish brekkie). Hey even kept the restaurant open so I could have dinner. I had the Haddock in a Guinness batter with chips (with salt and vinegar) and peas. It was Scottish – I was too chicken (and too tired) to try the haggis. It was so good, I decided to try dessert, which was a delicious rhubarb crème brulee (I love rhubarb) with home made shortbread. mmm shortbread.

 

I watched some British telly, including FM, which I have heard good things about and which features stars from the IT crowd and Teachers. I can’t remember if it was BBC3 or ITV 2.The TV stations here really do seem to be pitched at particular markets, in a much more obvious way than in Australia (with the exception of SCTEN and perhaps ABC2) FM was great. If it’s not on Auntie’s radar, I will be lobbying. I charged the laptop but was far too tired to finish my blog so I curled up for a comfy night’s sleep.

 

I went down to the dining hall, which was a hall, with high ceilings and rows of tables. There was an extensive buffet brekkie, the kind you find in a Marriott or similar at home. While I was surveying the buffet for my sustenance, the staff delivered tea, condiments and toast (in a prope3r toast rack) to my table. I chose a hearty breakfast – egg, bacon, sausage, mushrooms and I had black pudding – essentially it tasted like I was eating pate, except with a sausage consistency. [‘Johnny the Horse’ – Madness – this is off their 2000 album, Wonderful – I was going to say recent but its almost nine years ago – where did that go?]

 

The helpful reception staff had provided me with some info on Loch Ness cruises but it had the info I was looking for – how to get to Drumnadrochit, centre of Loch Ness monster mania. There was a bus from the bus station a street over. I wandered over to the bus station. The bus, which only runs every two hours, was already 10 minutes late but luckily the driver was half way through a smoke and I managed to get a ticket and get on the bus. As time was limited, I had to make a choice – do I choose to go to Urqhart Castle which will no doubt have a gift shop and a tour and is actually on the shore of the Loch or do I go to Drumnadrochit, which is a town likely consumed by the industry of the monster. I chose the town because I thought it would be more interesting (and include more tacky enterprises). And I was right.

 

There seems to be a bit of competition for Nessie rights in Drumnadrochit. As you drive toward the town, about two or three kilometers before you reach it, you find the Clansman hotel with what looks like a really large commercial gift shop. They have another one in the town. The bus doesn’t stop here. In the town, there is the Loch Ness Discovery Centre, which you imagine to be some sort of government initiative that is free. It isn’t. This is the place that has the statue of Nessie in the water. But you have to pay to get in. I chose to visit the place off the highway that professed to be the original Loch Ness Monster exhibition. They also have a statue of the monster out the front. I must add that it is quite a walk from Drumnadrochit to the Loch so my photos (which don’t show the monster) were taken through the bus window. The exhibition was a bit of a ramshackle affair. It looked a bit like a construction site. Essentially you walked past some photo stands and into what looked like a very old theatre, the type with those wooden-framed leather seats padded with horsehair and upholstered using brass studs. Of course it was dark when I went in and the woman in the shop put on the filum. It featured a Scottish guy – I’m guessing a local from the production quality – in a kilt telling the tale of the Loch and the monster sightings. These included but were not limited to: two major scientific scans of the loch with sonar equipment (inconclusive); a raft of sightings by monks at the nearby Abbey (and an interview with one, presumably to add credence to the story as man of the cloth would never lie); the ‘hundreds’ of sightings by highlanders that were not documented with photos; and, my particular favourite, a Swedish crew who were going to bag and tag the animal or at least get a scraping of its DNA – they were hampered in their quest by a famous ‘white witch’ from the UK – who just looked like a fat guy who invented a scam so he wouldn’t ever have to get out of his bathrobe. The film sowed his arrival in a limo – for a minute I thought a real celebrity had joined the cause. Highlander searching for the monster perhaps? Don’t laugh. Outside this exhibition was another highlight – a miniature castle with a couple of what looked like highlanders flanking it – It was the Braveheart Castle – having a bet each way I suppose, like the winter adventure world at the Santa village. People went there for Santa and came here for Nessie. End of story. I wanted to ask how many people bothered with the Braveheart Castle but didn’t have the heart. No Highlander exhibit to be seen though. Don’t they know ‘there can be only one’?

 

The gift shop looked like it was under construction and I had already given them a fiver for the ‘exhibition’ so I thought I’d spend my readies at a different gift shop. There were quite a few to choose from. I found just the one – they were having a closing down sale – everything was half price. Liquidated souvenirs sounded just my style. I purchased my items – my niece will be pleased to read that despite being able to purchase Nessie souvenirs at just about every gift shop in Scotland, hers was purchased in a liquidation sale near the loch. I was intrigued about the closing sale – were there one too many entrepeneurs who thought they could make a quick buck in Drumnadrochit. I was informed by the very pleasant woman who owned the place that she and her husband were going into semi-retirement and giving up the shop but still operating the online side of the business. Online souvenirs sort of defeats the purpose. What’s next? Buy your holiday snaps online without ever leaving the couch?

 

I hurried back to the bus stop (if I missed this bus, there wouldn’t be another one for two hours, which would mean I would miss the direct train to Edinburgh, have to change at Perth and arrive in Edinburgh at 9pm). I met this woman who was quite chatty. She was originally from Essex and had moved to Aberdeen and loved it. Somehow she wound up in Drumnadrochit. She and her child have made friends there and so now it is home. In fact everyone I cam across here, apart from the woman at the exhibition, was from somewhere else. I guess in Scotland, it’s a loch change.

 

There’s actually quite a lot of other stuff you can do here – mainly in the summer. The loch is the first of a series – the Great Glen, which splits Scotland in two and separates the highlands from the lowlands. You can bushwalk from one side of Scotland to the other and apparently there are loads of Mountain Biking trails at varying levels of difficulty. Perhaps, one day when I am fitter (and have taken out some quite hefty medical and injury insurance).

 

I returned to the hotel and grabbed my bag. It was then that I noticed the protective satchel for the laptop was a little bit too warm. I opened it and the computer was positively scorching. I obviously hadn’t shut down properly and sitting in its protective cocoon, it had overheated. I tried turning it on – no luck. It didn’t smell like anything had fried. I surmised there were two outcomes – either it had shutdown because it had run out of battery or it had given up after it fried. Either way I wouldn’t know until I had access to power so I jumped on the train for Edinburgh, which traveled on the same track on which I arrived until we arrived in Perth. The countryside in the east was remarkably similar to the west until we came closer to the coast and I saw for the first time in a while, something that resembled a beach – there was sand instead of cliffs. We pulled into Edinburgh’s Waverly station just as the sun was beginning to set. I found my way through Edinburgh’s weave of tiny streets and laneways (and very steep hills) to the hostel, which as promised was directly below Edinburgh castle. Again there were friendly New Zealanders and an Aussie staffing the reception desk. They offered a free pub crawl that evening. ( I came downstairs later to check it out before I would agree to go. It was being run by an Australian girl and most of those going along were American college students. I decided against it in the end.) They also offered free wi-fi.

 

With my key in hand I rushed up the two different flights of stairs to my room on the top floor – it actually had a really cool attic window – and plugged the laptop in. It worked – hurrah. The acer really is tough. Unfortunately I had lost a train ride for the purpose of blogging and was way too exhausted to blog before bead. I headed just up the road and decided, after all the stodgy food I had been eating, to go for Thai.

 

It turned out to be an excellent choice. The Thai Orchid (which included fresh orchids on the table and also one on the tray with the bill) produced some of the best Thai have ever eaten (and that includes the Erindale Thai place and the one that was in Kiama’s main street). The starter was four king prawns stuffed with season prawn meat and pork, covered in an omelet web and served with a tamarind sauce. Then (predictably) I had the Massaman curry – there was no beef so I ordered the chicken. It was glorious. I might point out that most of my restaurant meals have been accompanied by a glass of wine (or in some recent cases a Guinness. I haven’t mentioned the wines because none has stood out in comparison to Australian wines. I’m sure if I went for the top of the range wines, they might but at a low to mid-range level, they just don’t compare to Australian wines. I’m no expert but I don’t think I’ll be ordering European cleanskins any time soon.

 

During dinner I chatted with a Dutch couple who had been to both Australia and New Zealand. They were disappointed I wasn’t going to Holland. After dinner it was time for some telly (there was one in my room) and a big sleep.