Home -> Europe -> Scotland -> Travelogue 2002 -> Monday 8 April

Inverness, Culloden Battlefield, Clava cairns

And again, we wake up quite late. It has been late, last night. Our last day in the Highlands, but we are not in a hurry. We will be back, for sure. So first we drive to Inverness and after some searching, we finally find the soup spoons we have been looking for. Although we have walked through Inveress before, it seems as if we notice all the nice buildings for the first time.

So we take some pictures. To the left Inverness Castle and to the right the cathedral. But Teije has been altering some settings of his camera, and most of the pictures are not really good. But it doesn't matter: we will be back next year.

Inverness is the largest town in the Highlands, but the historic center isn't very big. Several bridges, like this walking bridge, connect the sides of the town.

It is a drizzly day and we are glad we have been to Strathconnon and Glen Affric yesterday. Today, we have planned to visit a few sights in the neighbourhood, like Culloden Battlefield. There is a nice exposition and an excellent video presentation about the tragedy which happened here in 1746 and which would change the Highlands forever.
Just when we want to go outside to walk around the battle field, it starts to rain, so we save that walk for another time.

In Inverness, we have also bought some very detailed maps of the environment. Next time we will be able to see more of the environment, thanks to these maps. We are quite surprised to see how many more stone circles, castles and forts are in this neighbourhood than according to our normal map. Enough to do and see, the next time.
To the right a picture of Cawdor Castle, famous because this is supposedly the castle where the play MacBeth of Shakespeare was situated.

And we still have to visit a lot of castles. On the website we have a list of more than 300 castles at the moment, with references to other websites with more information and pictures about these castles. But Elisabeth likes to surprise Teije with a special map on which more than 1300 castles are listed (just in Scotland). What does she think, that I don't know what to do with my time..?

Not far away from Culloden lies the prehistoric field Clava Cairns, with several tombs. The cairns are surrounded by stone circles. They were build around 2.000 BC. There are three cairns at this place, but archeologists have found many more along this part of the river. More pictures on the antiquities-page.

After that, Teije wants to try these detailed maps and we go looking for a waterfall near by Inverness. But instead of desolate side roads we find entire residential and industrial areas. We have a better look at the maps and it turns out they were printed in 1986... But we come close to the waterfall, at most 200 meters away from it. At least, that is what Teije says. A fence prevents us to go closer and Elisabeth still has her doubts...

Near Beauly, we drive past Moniack Castle, because we don't have a picture of it yet. It is more a kind of country house and a winery now, where they make wines out of everything, except grapes.

We are back at the hotel quite early, because we want to have some time with Iain and Cathy. They have been very busy the last few days, otherwise we would have gone out with the four of us to have a walk or something like that. Well, they are working, we are having a holiday.

Time to take a few personal pictures, but the ladies in our company aren't very charmed with the idea. It isn't very busy in the pub, so we have enough time to chat for a few hours.

But we don't go to bed too late, tonight, since we have to be on our way at 8 in the morning, tomorrow, to get our plane. Still, we have a very pleasant stay in the pub, we always have and we are always sorry to have to leave here.

Travel through Europe and Africa

with Elisabeth and Teije