Home -> Europe -> Scotland -> Travelogue 2005 -> Sunday 8 May

A short trip to Inverness

And yes, it isn't early anymore when we finally show up to have breakfast. But that is ok, we don't have anything planned for today, except going to Inverness to see if we can buy a nice Scotland t-shirt for our grandchild Esmée. When we have coffee with Iain and Cathy we suddenly hear a parade with bagpipers. It is in commemoration of V-i-E day with some old veterans. At first we don't get it, V-i-E-day, what is that? But it is a abbreviation of Victory in Europe-day, the commemoration of the end of world war II in the UK.

It is still quite cold but the sun shines and it is nice to walk through Inverness which is the biggest city of the Highlands, but not too big. The view over the river is beautiful and the castle glimmers in the sun. We have our winter coats on, so we enjoy a warm coffee outside a restaurant.

From Inverness (we leave without having found a t-shirt) we drive southwards along Loch Ness and soon take a steep road into the hills, west of the lake. It is a deserted area with steep and narrow roads and hidden villages. We are lucky enough not to encounter any traffic, since I wouldn't like to pass another car on a single track road going up with a slope of more than 20%. The broom (and another sort of which we forgot the English name) is flowering and the hills are colored with yellow.

On the plain west of Loch Ness are many traces of prehistoric settlements, like the remains of houses on the picture. We walk around and look for these traces, but we don't see much more than round circles in the ground, indicating the outline of the dwellings. Like here, you can find everywhere in Scotland remnants of old cultures, more than the maps and touristic leaflets tell.

It is still early in the afternoon when we return to Beauly, since we want to take some more pictures of the hotel itself for the website we have made last year for the Caledonian hotel. But when we enter the bar, the time starts to fly when we are talking with Iain and Cathy and later with everybody who comes in.

The hotel building has been standing here now for more than 300 years and used to be a coaching inn where the stagecoaches stopped to change horses. It is a big building and demands a lot of maintenance and with all the new rules coming up, Iain and Cathy fear for the worst. A license to renovate the pub on the ground floor is still not in (after more than a year) for all kinds of bureaucratic reasons. Although it is not a 5-star hotel, it is the only place we want to be when in Beauly!

Tomorrow we leave again after a couple of nice days with our friends here, and in the meantime we have seen some new things as well. We really want to go to bed early tonight, but again, this plan fails... We learn to play dominos, a real and serious mania here and it is 2 o'clock in the morning when we go to our room. We'll see tomorrow...

Travel through Europe and Africa

with Elisabeth and Teije