Fort Augustus

13/01/12 Friday

This morning we got up bright and early and started off the day with some heartfelt exercise from Graham and less than heartfelt from Melaina. We decided to do a day trip from Fort William to Fort Augustus and stop at any interesting things along the way.

The journey was beautiful, with amazing mountains and glassy lochs. Unfortunately it was bloody cold! We had our first camping frost and although the scenery was brushed with silver, the stupid car doesn’t have any form of heating, and the cold air seems to blow in vents above the dash. This meant full on thermals, coats, hats, gloves and plenty of jiggling to keep the hypothermia at bay while we drove.

We stopped at the Bridge of Oich, got out, made a few steps towards a fairly uninteresting looking bridge and literally ran back to the car to ‘relative’ warmth.

The canals of Fort Augustus

Fort Augustus is a very cute little town on the southern edge of the Loch Ness, with the Caledonian Canal and the River Oich running through it. It has several fun sounding activities…. Like the clansman centre and the rare breeds croft- both of which were closed for the winter, which was disappointing. We decided against the cruise on the loch, as the only one that runs in the winter misses out the Castle Urquhart, which we really wanted to see. We wandered around Fort Augustus and didn’t find much open so we drove up to the castle.

Getting close to Nessie

The castle starts with a lovely modern visitors centre complete with shop, café and pre-castle movie. The shop had the usual tourist rah-di-dah, calendars filled with glorious pictures of highland cows chewing grass, and tiny bottles of whiskey- never to be opened, only to be joined to a collection and gazed at in admiration.

We began with a video re-enacting the castles gory history, which was fairly well done and involved some tidily dressed highlanders, rabbiting around in slow motion battle scenes.

The first view of the castle

The castle itself is mostly no more, but they have done a great job preserving what is left and putting up signs explaining where rich noblemen went to the toilet, and had their bread baked (not the same room though).  It overlooks the great Loch Ness and Graham and I thought this may be the perfect opportunity for a little Nessie hunting. To our great dismay, the monster did not appear- even after repeated calls in various forms of monster languages. Perhaps she is holding out on us, till we cruise around on a boat, or offer a sacrifice of a goat or something.

The ruins on the banks of the Loch Ness



Following in some famous footsteps



After this we drove a little further to highly pronounceable town of Drumnadrochit through recommendations of our guide book. The five star Loch Ness Centre was closed and the Nessieland Castle monster centre looked a bit crap. However, the failed trip out there was far corrected by the magic that occurred in a little bakery…. I had my very first macaroni and cheese pie. Yes, the filling of the pie is mac and cheese and it was glorious. I can’t wait for the next nom.



Graham may correct me here and say the highlight of this trip was the find-your-clan centre or whatever it was called. Where you could look up your names and find your surnames history and clan. I found my clan  and Graham looked up his. He was most impressed to find that his surname comes from Pict royalty, and has been blathering all day about it.

We finish today with a wine/cider and head off to Aviemore tomorrow.

Post script, From Earl Graham Targett

I am very proud to be a direct descendant of Lord Malcolm Targett, a very powerful Pict nobleman. The Targett family were a very influential family in Scotland and Northern Ireland from the year 700ad to 1675 when the Maxwell’s brutally slaughtered the majority of the family, though a number did survive to pass on the distinguished name. The Targett name remains to this day, as a name that is widely respected and associated with success, honour, bravery and other equally noble attributes.



The image of Pict royalty?