Week 32-34: Dalwhinnie to Inverness
Happy spring, friends! My colleagues in DC have been talking about beautiful sunny days… and even here, we too have enjoyed a lot of sunshine and temperatures in the 50s and 60s in recent weeks.
But today, we are anticipating a HUGE snowstorm, perhaps record-breaking even here in Colorado which is known for getting big, wet March snows.
Personally, I am hoping for as much precipitation as we can get. It hasn’t been this dry in the state since the record drought year of 2002, which was abruptly ended when a historic blizzard slammed the region in March 2003.
So, bring on the blizzard!
Certified guide in Scotland, Kirsten Griew
And now… back to our virtual trek the length of Great Britain!
For the past few weeks, we have been lucky enough to have certified Blue Badge guide for Scotland Kirsten Griew sharing stories and history as we continue making our way north. Kirsten too is participating in our journey from Land’s End to John O’Groats, moving virtually over terrain she’s seen in real life.
What follows today comes from mainly from Kirsten, with just a few notes thrown in from me. Thanks, Kirsten… and enjoy, friends!
We ended last week in the highland village of Dalwhinnie. Something I didn't mention last post is that from about Killiecrankie we have been walking through one of Scotland's two national parks: The Cairngorms.
Scotland only got National Parks in 2002, this one and the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park, which is ironic as the initiator of the idea of national parks, John Muir, was a Scot! He came from the town of Dunbar, just east of Edinburgh, before moving to California as a child with his family. He married and he and his wife inherited his father-in-law's fruit plantation at Martinez, California (the town where my wife and I had our wedding ceremony, incidentally!). The people of Scotland barely know who John Muir is, whilst I understand that in the States (and especially California) he is pretty big news.
The name Cairngorms is the name of the park, the name of the central mountain range within the park, and also the name of an individual mountain within that range. It comes from Scottish Gaelic. 'Cairn' means a pile of stones, and historically the clansmen would each take a local stone and add them to a pile when they went to fight in a battle. When those who survived returned, they would each remove a stone, so those stones remaining would be a memorial to the fallen. Now we use the term in Scotland to mean any pile of stones, including ancient Neolithic burial chambers and many modern monuments are constructed as a cemented together group of stones. 'Gorm' refers to a colour that we don't have an exact translation for in the English language, but which is a bluey/greeny shade. So Cairngorm basically means: 'the greeny-bluey mountain that looks like a giant pile of stones'!
Sir Hugh Thomas Munro, for whom Munros were named.
The mountain range has 5 of the 6 highest mountains in the UK (only Ben Nevis is higher). All of them fall in the category of Munro, which includes any mountain in Scotland of 3000 ft and over. We have 282 munros, and are very proud of them - although I realise this height doesn't compare with mountains in the Rockies, Himalayas or Alps... In fact, the reason our mountains are not as high is that they are much older.
The Cairngorms formed in a very similar way to the Himalayas (with 2 land masses crashing into one another and pushing the mountains up - in our case, England and Scotland). When this first happened our mountains were as high as the Himalayas are now, but have eroded away over the millennia. In fact, an interesting fact is that the Scottish mountains are part of the same range as the Appalachians and the Scandinavian mountains of Norway and Sweden. We were all one big landmass at one time!
The individual mountain Cairn Gorm has the largest of Scotland's 5 Highland ski centres with a funicular railway to take the skiers up to the high slopes. Evidently they had the best snow for decades this year... but sadly, because of the pandemic no one was allowed to use the slopes and enjoy it.
As we move on from Dalwhinnie, we are cutting across the country toward the west coast. And for a little while we are following the River Spey. This is Scotland's 3rd longest river (after the Tay and the Clyde), at 107 miles, and is particularly famous for its whisky distilleries. Not so much on this stretch, but as it flows further east and carves out a wide valley - Strathspey - there are many dozens of famous distilleries using the water of the Spey and its tributaries, for example Glenfiddich, Macallan, Balvenie and Glen Grant are all Speyside distilleries.
Ardverikie Castle
Just south of us at this point is the Ardverikie Estate, with Victorian Scottish Baronial Ardverikie Castle sitting on Loch Laggan. It is very picturesque and has been used in a variety of tv and films, for example it was 'The Big Hoose at Glenbogle' in Monarch of the Glen, it stared in Mrs Brown, the film about Queen Victoria and her gillie, John Brown, and most recently it revived its role as Balmoral Castle in the Netflix series The Crown.
Soon we reach the main road that goes up the west coast of Scotland. It follows the Great Glen - a huge valley that cuts right across the country from southwest to northeast, carved out by glaciers during the ice ages, when they found a fault line to excavate. Evidently the glaciers could very easily have cut just a little deeper and severed right through the land, so the area northwest of the faultline could have ended up a completely separate island! Instead, it created a massive valley which then filled with water to form a series of lochs, including the one we now are walking alongside: Loch Ness.
Loch Ness (photo by the Pottery House B&B)
Loch Ness is HUGE! It is the second-longest loch in Scotland (at 25.5 miles, Loch Awe is longer), and the second-deepest (at 1,070 feet, Loch Morar is deeper). But it holds the record for having the greatest volume of water. To give a sense of the size of Loch Ness, they say that if the water was drained from the loch, the entire population of the world could fit in the space left behind... more than 10 times over! Another way of thinking of it, is that if all the water in all the lakes, rivers and reservoirs across all of England and Wales was put together in one place, it would only make up a little over half the water that is in this one loch.
Which means, of course, plenty of space for a mysterious monster to be hanging around...
A famous 1934 photo of the Loch Ness Monster which (alas!) has since been determined to be a fake. (Photo from the BBC)
The first sighting of the Loch Ness monster goes back all the way to 565 AD and St Columba. Columba was an Irish missionary who settled on the island of Iona off the west coast of Scotland, founding a monastery there, and started travelling across the land of the Picts (the people who inhabited this part of what's now Scotland) trying to convert them to Christianity. There is a well-known story that comes from his hagiography. He was heading the same way as us, up the Great Glen, towards Inverness, as that is where the local monarch, King Brude was situated. He had the idea that if he could convert the king, then the king would do the work of converting the rest of the people for him.
Brude’s castle no longer stands, but Inverness Castle (built in 1836) sits near the site where it once stood.
As Columba arrived at Brude's Castle, it turned out that the king had heard the missionary was on his way, and wanted nothing to do with this new-fangled religion, and so ordered his servants lock the Castle gates. However, as he arrived the gates evidently swung open of their own accord to admit Columba. The king was so impressed by this miracle, that he converted, and ensured the people of his kingdom did too.
St. Columba commanding the Monster to “Be gone!”
However, now Columba needed to get home, and first he needed to cross the River Ness (the only river to flow out of Loch Ness). There was a boat, but it was on the wrong side of the river. Columba asked one of his followers to swim over and bring the boat back for the rest of them. The man leapt in the water and started swimming, but as he got about half way across a huge green head emerged from the depths, with pointed teeth and was going for the man in the water. Columba could not allow his follower to be eaten by the monster, so he commanded it to 'Be Gone!'. Miraculously, the monster did as it was told and swam away. Apparently the other part to this miracle was that at the same moment the monster changed from the dangerous man-eating creature to the friendly monster that is so well loved today!
This 12th-century manuscript by Walter of Bingham is the first known depiction of the Loch Ness monster… and curiously, Walter depicted it more like a bear than a serpent.
About two-thirds of the way up Loch Ness we pass Urquhart Castle. Now ruinous, Urquhart Castle was once the third most important fortress in Scotland, after Stirling and Edinburgh Castles. Its position in the heart of the Highlands, and on a raised promontory on a loch with a river that connects it directly to the North Sea, meant that attackers would easily sail here, but could be spotted from a long distance by the inhabitants.
Urquhart Castle (photo by Wikimedia user Peter Glyn)
The earliest part of the surviving castle is from the 13th century and it faced warfare every century after that, with Wars of Independence in 13th/14th centuries, attacks by the wonderfully named Lords of the Isles in 14th/15th centuries and Jacobite attacks over 17th/18th centuries. In fact, the castle was always in the hands of government supporters, but eventually the soldiers garrisoning the castle were so concerned that the Jacobites would attack and take the castle off them, that they decided to destroy their own castle to stop it falling into enemy hands. They filled the building with gunpowder and destroyed their own castle - leaving it as the romantic ruins we have today.
Panorama of Inverness looking downstream to the Greig St Bridge with Huntly Street (left), the River Ness, and Bank Street (right), (Photo from Wikimedia user Avarim)
Finally, we reach Inverness, which sits at the top of the Great Glen. It is known as the capital of the Highlands, and although human habitation here dates to the Picts (before the 6th century) it has officially been a city only since 2000. It is a major hub, and it is almost impossible to get further north in Scotland by any method of transport without passing through Inverness. Road, train and boat routes all converge here.
It is a major centre of culture for the Highlands with a fantastic theatre and lots of great music venues. It is also the HQ of the University of the Highlands and Islands, which has colleges throughout those areas, allowing students to remain local in order to study, and thereby has helped in the challenge of stemming the drain of people from these more rural areas that has been going on for 300 years. In fact, Inverness is classed as the fastest growing city in Europe over the last 20 years. Lots of businesses have moved here, opening up jobs; and it is thought to have a very good quality of life. With the River Ness running through it and bounded by a section of the North Sea known as the Moray Firth, it is very picturesque, as well as having an important port.
Many bottlenose dolphins make the Moray Firth their home. (Photo by EcoVentures)
A final story relates to the city's football (soccer) team. They are called the Caledonian Thistle, generally shortened to Caley Thistle or just Caley. They are in the Scottish leagues, but not right up at the top, where the big Glasgow teams Celtic and Rangers take their places.
So, back in February 2000, when Caley Thistle were to play Celtic, the result was assumed to be a foregone conclusion. However, Caley surprised everyone and won by 3-1! The population of Inverness were delirious! And a local paper had a field day with their headline the next morning which read:
Super Caley Go Ballistic Celtic are Atrocious!!
Fancy a pint?
Unlike the Naylor brothers, who pledged to “abstain from all intoxicating drink” during their 1871 walk on this route, I’m not at all opposed to popping into interesting-looking pubs along the way. Here are a few along this stretch of the journey… this time, curated by Kirsten Griew, who has actually been there in person!
Fort Augustus’ Lock Inn (toward the left in this photo)
One wonderful, scenic pub along the route is the Lock Inn at Fort Augustus. It is such a pleasure to sit outside by the canal locks, watching the boats go up and down! They also carry a special local beer on tap: Cairngorm Brewing’s “Nessie Monster Mash,” a malty chestnut beer.
If you enjoy music with your beer, check out the Hootananny in Inverness, a wonderful music venue which offers live music nightly.
They also serve beer from the Black Isle Brewery, an all-organic brewery which makes some of my favourites!
Hootananny in Inverness
Inverness’s Waterfront gastropub
The Waterfront in Inverness is a small place also with locally-sourced food, on the River Ness. The motto here is “We have No strangers enter here; only friends we have yet to meet.” The menu changes regularly and vegans are happily accommodated.
My favourite beer on tap here is Tradewinds, made by the Cairngorm Brewery.
Sustenance for the Hungry Vegan
The Glen Rowan Café in Invermoriston is a family-run restaurant and bakery that offers a seasonally-variable menu. The desserts posted online look delicious!
The Glen Rowan Café in Invermoriston
Looks like The Alleycat was THE place to be this past January for Burns Supper. Mmmm!
Inverness has a fantastic restaurant scene of all types of food. Recently, its first fully vegan café opened: The Alleycat!
The café has created a number of vegan versions of “comfort food,” including mac & cheese and even vegan haggis! They also offer all-vegan pastries, cakes, cookies and boxed chocolate assortments.
Velocity in Inverness
Note from Ashley: I had no idea that “cycle cafes” were a worldwide phenomenon, but Kirsten shared that Velocity in Inverness is a vegetarian cafe & bike shop combined! It reminds me of one of my fave hangouts in Seattle: Métier, just a couple blocks from that temple to vegan cuisine, Plum Bistro.
Back to Inverness… In addition to its vegetarian menu, Velocity aims to limit the impact of its operation by encouraging people to bring their own takeaway cups, and limiting the plastic it uses.
Inverness’s The Mustard Seed
One of my favourite restaurants in Inverness is the Mustard Seed, which offers an all-vegan menu in addition to its more traditional offerings.
Cheers, everyone, and see you on the trail!
