Lochness & Culloden

The tour bus took the group from Inverness to a boat landing on Loch Ness where most of the group paid 22 Pounds each for a cruise on the Loch. No monster sightings were reported.

The lake is the largest in Scotland (and the UK) by volume, but not by area. It's 23 miles long but only a bit less than 2 miles wide. Yet it is as deep as Lake Superior -- almost 800 feet. So it holds a lot of water.

We opted out of the cruise, and instead took a hike on a very nice trail along the lake. Obviously, beside a lake so narrow and yet so deep, the hills around it are very steep. So we got our exercise. But the lake views were probably better than what the folks on the boat got.

There were a couple of brief stops along the way, but the main event of the morning was the battlefield at Culloden. In April, 1746 the Jacobite rebels supporting Prince Charles Edward Stuart ("Bonnie Prince Charlie") were decisively defeated by a British government force commanded by the Duke of Cumberland, Prince William Augustus.

The battlefield is sacred to Scots, but also to fans of the TV show, Outlander. Although Jamie Fraser is a fictional character (who is depicted as dying tragically in this battle), the mass grave marked as containing the remains of the warriors of Clan Fraser has to be chained off. There are frequently flowers on it.

Charles was attempting to restore to the throne his father, James Stuart, son of James II of England. James II, a Catholic, had been deposed in "The Glorious Revolution" of 1688 which brought Protestants, William and Mary. Charles had taken control of Scotland, but Culloden was a military blunder that cost the lives of a couple thousand Scots and forced Charles to flee to France.

But it was the aftermath of the battle that makes it a sore spot with Scots to this day. Following the defeat, the Duke of Cumberland arrested, and often put to death, the surviving leaders of all the Scottish clans, confiscated their lands, and banned the wearing of clan tartans. This earned him the title, "The Butcher of Cumberland," and Scots seem irritated about it when they speak of it, even now.

A referendum for Scottish independence was narrowly defeated in 2014, and at least one political party here is pressing for another. We have yet to see a UK "Union Jack" flag here, but the blue and white "Cross of St. Andrew" Scottish flag is everywhere. and many signs are in the Scots Gaelic (even though a tiny minority of Scots are actually fluent in speaking the language).

After a lunch stop in the town of Aviemore, a touristy place that is one of Scotland's biggest ski resorts in winter, we drove on to the Highland Folk Museum near Newtonmore. This is an outdoor museum where many old buildings have been relocated, restored, and furnished according to their time periods. This "living history" exhibition was quite well done, and it would have been nice to have a little more time here.

Live animals, including sheep and "hairy coos" (cows) added to the realistic ambiance of the place. Buildings ranged from the "black houses" (windowless stone dwellings where people and animals lived under the same roof) to homes of the 1930s and '40s.

The final stop was the town of Pitlochry, another very touristy locale, where the quaint old stone buildings are still very much in use. We enjoyed a good bowl of soup and a sweet at a local bakery here as dinner.

This tour ended in Edinburgh. But since we had booked with the other company on a tour that was to begin and end in Glasgow, we were given railway tickets back to that city. The train was packed, but the ride was only about 50 minutes. If we hadn't gotten so turned around in the rail station we would have gotten to our hotel sooner for the night.