Hunting Nessie

Inverness & Fort Augustus, Scotland

A trip around Scotland couldn’t be complete without trying to hunt for Nessie. The drive from Dingwall wasn’t too bad and was on the way to our next Airbnb in Inverness. We didn’t do a lot of research, so we decided to head to the Loch Ness Center and Exhibition and start there. We are still surprised at how easy parking is around Scotland. We parked right in front of the Center and were allowed to stay there all day, totally free! Having lived in Los Angeles for the past 10 years, I’m shocked every time I find free parking with no limitations, especially at a popular tourist destination. We went into the Loch Ness Center, but really it is 100% an exhibition and we weren’t really interested in that. We figured anything worth knowing we could learn on a tour. We walked down the street to Celtic Crafts, an adorable little store with beautiful Scottish themed crafts and some highland cow paintings we wanted to buy (but our backpacks save us from spending money!) and bought tickets for our boat tour there. We were lucky that they had tickets for a boat that left in about an hour and a half, so we had some tea while we waited to board The Nessie Hunter. Our skipper was George Edwards, the longest serving passenger boat skipper on Loch Ness, who also recorded the greatest known depth of Loch Ness at 812 feet. He has been diving in the lake and on boats around the lake for longer than we have been alive, so he seemed like the perfect tour guide for today’s adventure. The boat was nice, there is an inside where you can look at the sonars, radar, and underwater camera. You can also sit outside on the lower deck or on the upper deck. The tour is roughly an hour taking you around the lake and towards the end you get a stunning view of Urquhart Castle from the water and I wouldn’t want to see it any other way! We looked long and hard, but unfortunately we weren’t lucky enough to see Nessie today. The tour was amazing anyway, George taught us so much about the Loch and the surrounding area and the facts about Nessie and all of the sightings. The tour was so nice we feel like it went by a little two quickly. The views are stunning as you can see from the images. If we had more time in the area, there is a path going around the Loch that is accessed from different points on the road circling it and it would have been beautiful to hike there. Instead, we decided to head down to Fort Augustus.

Fort Augustus is a cute little town on the Caledonian Canal with beautiful views of the water. We got some ice cream (we always want ice cream) and then walked down part of The Great Glen Way which was totally gorgeous. We were even lucky enough to watch some boats navigate the canal, which was something we’d never seen before. We wanted to stay longer and walk around, but it started raining and we had a dinner reservation at 7:30, so we had to get going. Seeing the town is pretty quick, but there are enough beautiful paths that you could spend a whole day walking around the area.

The drive to Inverness felt long with the windy windy roads around Loch Ness. It is starting to feel so repetitive, but the drive was beautiful. I wished that we had some more time so we could stop and take some time hiking along the paths that are all around the roads, but it was raining and we needed to check into our Airbnb in Inverness before we headed out to Hootananny where we had reservations. We found Colin’s house pretty easily, and he met us at the door and walked us around to the trailer we would be staying in. The trailer is in his backyard and I’ve got to say that it was definitely one of my favorite Airbnb experiences. It was small of course, but it felt so cozy. When we were kids, we had a pop-up camper that we would take around, so it felt nostalgic. It was secure as well, the camper locked, and it was in the backyard which was fenced in with a locked gate. Honestly the shower and toilet facilities were better than expected as well. I wished that we had booked another night here. Our host was really cool too, he is an avid traveler and cyclist and let us know that he had biked across the entire United States a year ago! One of the best parts of staying at an Airbnb is meeting other travel addicts like us! Hootananny was a pretty easy walk, just across the bridge into the center of town. We decided to have dinner there and dinner was good, pretty standard. I had a burger and Kim had fish and chips. They had a good selection of beer and whisky. We really were just waiting for the music to start though! The band consisted of 3 men who played multiple instruments. I love folk music whether it’s American or Irish or Scottish, and this band proved to be great. The bar was full with people sitting at tables all around and people standing. We expected to see some dancing but there wasn’t any (at least not this night.) I’m so glad we were able to make this happen! After that we turned in, we had a long walk back and a long drive the next day. ~Annette