Scotland/Iceland Trip 2018: Stop 3: Inverness (Sept. 15-17)

When I was researching the train connections for this trip, my Google search indicated that it was a 2 hour trip from Fort William to Inverness. When I went to book it, I couldn't find anything less than 14 hours. All of the routes went back through Glasgow and then up to Inverness via Perth (with very bad connections between trains). There was no direct train from Fort William to Inverness.

After some experimentation, I was able to recreate my original Google search. The 2 hour connection was via bus and the route followed the Caledonian Canal and the entire length of Loch Ness. Naturally, we traveled by bus.

I used Google Maps to find a rather strange, "most direct", walking route from the bus station to our hotel. Good thing, as it was quite a hike. When we checked in, the person at the desk mapped out a route to the train station. When we scouted the very short route out, we found that the bus station was practically next door!

Our hotel was right on the River Ness so we took a lot of pictures during our walks.

I'm going to be mentioning the castle. It's a very prominent fake castle. We wanted to tour it until we found out that it is of fairly new construction and houses the courthouse and jails.

Our hotel is across the river behind the trees. That's the castle up on the hill on the left.

Looking upstream from one of the bridges. Our hotel is to the right of the building on the far bank.

Statues are of Faith, Hope and Charity. Our hotel is around the corner to the left.

Again, our hotel is to the right of the large building.

The castle.

We didn't go through the castle but it was worth climbing the hill to see the views.

Looking upstream from the castle. We met the van for our tour in front of the hotel across the river.

Looking downstream from the castle.

Looking way downstream from the castle.

The second floor windows above and to the left were our room. The room on the left had a table and chairs in the bay window so we enjoyed sitting there and watching the river flow by (very fast flowing river I might add).

The view from our bay window.

The highlight of our visit to Inverness was an 8 hour van tour to Loch Ness, a distillery, Culloden, the Clava Cairns, etc. We sampled several whiskeys at the distillery but that was hardly necessary. Our kilt clad driver/guide supplied us with plastic shot glasses and most stops included a shot of one of the whiskeys that he carried in the boot.

The first stop was Loch Ness.

We must be living a charmed life. Imagine that Nessie decided to appear on the day that we were there (Thanks Briar).

This was the castle of the Grant clan (to which the Cairns were somehow affiliated). The clans to the West of the rift were somewhat unruly and the Grant was given this choice site along with the responsibility for keeping the Western clans in line.

The next scheduled stop was the Glen Ord Distillery but we were running ahead of schedule so we stopped to visit some Highland cattle.

This baby bull's name was Jamie (Outlander reference)

Inside Glen Ord Distillery

Time for a lunch break in the village of Beauly. This was the seat of the Fraser clan (Outlander reference) and Fraser and Lovat references were abundant.

We ate at the Lovat Arms

Beauly featured an ancient priory. This tree is called the Witching Tree but kind of reminded us of the Whomping Willow in Harry Potter.

The Priory.

Kristen and our guide, John, at the Priory.

Next stop, Culloden.

Looking back at the museum from the battlefield.

The Culloden monument.

The Culloden monument,

They had quite a few stones to recognize the clan members who died at Culloden. These are not gravestones since the British had no idea of who was who when they put the bodies in mass graves. Many of the stones actually said "Misc. Clans". The Fraser stone has suffered a lot of abuse from Outlander fans.