On Thursday, we saw this castle driving along Loch Ness, Urquhart Castle, which charged admission to view a museum and the castle. We opted to keep going and got the above photo from the parking area. From Wikipedia: Scottish Gaelic: Caisteal na Sròine) sits beside Loch Ness in the Highlands of Scotland. The castle is on the A82 road, 21 kilometers (13 mi) south-west of Inverness and 2 kilometers (1.2 mi) east of the village of Drumnadrochit.
The present ruins date from the 13th to the 16th centuries, though built on the site of an early medieval fortification. Founded in the 13th century, Urquhart played a role in the Wars of Scottish Independence in the 14th century. It was subsequently held as a royal castle, and was raided on several occasions by the MacDonald Earls of Ross. The castle was granted to the Clan Grant in 1509, though conflict with the MacDonalds continued. Despite a series of further raids the castle was strengthened, only to be largely abandoned by the middle of the 17th century. Urquhart was partially destroyed in 1692 to prevent its use by Jacobite forces, and subsequently decayed. In the 20th century it was placed in state care and opened to the public: it is now one of the most-visited castles in Scotland.
We wouldn't find Nessie if we hung around some musky old castle! Michael was ready to set sail on Loch Ness to locate the elusive monster of the deep...
This looked like the obvious choice for the serious monster seeker, so we signed up and were fortunate enough to have the captain of the ship also driving our shuttle bus down to the water's edge. The captain insured us he had seen Nessie 7 times in his 35 years on Loch Ness, and felt certain today would be his 8th sighting. I knew we had chosen the right man! In his many years boating on the loch, our captain had discovered and mapped the deepest known area of this huge body of water which many thought, at it's unplumbed depths, was connected to the sea.
Sure enough, there it was! I whipped out my black and white camera and was able to capture this image before Nessie slipped back beneath the surface.
And, as it turned out, we got better photos and a more intimate view of Urquhart Castle from the water. One has to wonder how many times Nessie has been spotted from here in the hundreds of years it has stood as a sentry with it's commanding views over the loch.
Fortunately we got our car out of the parking shelter just in time, and we headed for home, stopping by the same pub again for dinner and some people watching.
And then it was Friday, already our last day in the Highlands. We took a leisurely drive toward Malig and Arisaig at the tip of one of the many peninsulas jutting out to the west into the northern Atlantic. We came upon a lovely secluded, rocky beach which we had to ourselves until, on our way back to the car, we met Gordon Nicol walking his Yellow Lab, Jasper, along this beach where he had taken many professional photographs of these Camusdarach Beaches.
We had some ice cream at Malig, a quaint little harbor town, and then headed back...
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