As you should know, I took the lady
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pipsytip to
The Old Bank House in Fort Augustus for her Birthday treat. Had a fantastic time.
The driving was long and on the whole easy, however if I were to do that in the future I would definitely go for longer. I couldn't justify the expense of another day though :( Drove up on Friday, set off about 11am, stopped once at Southwaite services and once at Loch Lomond. Got there about 7pm, only when we got there did I remember that I didn't know what the place was called. I knew the URL of their website though ;) Found it easily enough...
The people who run it are lovely. Very friendly, the house is huge and the room was lovely. Great location.
Went for a drink or two in the local pub, which despite people being friendly enough had a very "local pub for local people" vibe to it. Slept.
Saturday we got up early and were fed a fabulous breakfast. Went off on the road. Up to Castle Urquhart, which is great. Very well laid out and designed - some of the castle was a little oversanitised for our tastes but it's really interesting.
On to The Nessie Experience at Drumnadrochit. Very interesting and basically like a documentary on nessie-hunting very well done. Not sure it is worth the admission they charge but it was great fun. The worst bit? It was walkin from the exhibit into the gift shop and seeing a corridor of green. A corridor of green nessie-shaped stuffed toys. It was terrifying.
Then we went on the hunt for some distilleries, which was one of the biggest things we'd been looking forward to. Only it appears that, well... it appears that there are no distilleries are open for tours on Saturdays in the off-peak season? Yet they're all open Monday to Friday. Gah! Not particularly impressed.
Up to Inverness, which is at the top of Loch Ness, I'm still astonished by
how far north we were. Inverness doesn't appear to have much of anything really. A castle which has been transformed into offices (boo), a museum full of stuffed animals and not much else. Stopped for lunch and then headed off to
Moniack Castle.
Moniack Castle is where they produce Moniack mead and various preseves and stuff. Set in the middle of nowhere, we turned up about half an hour before their advertised closing time, only to find the place deserted. Really not impressed. Just a good job we'd picked up a bottle of mead at Urquhart else I would be really unhappy with them ;)
We'd stuck primarily to main roads up to this point. The drive there is on one road from Glasgow - the A82 all the way. Just stick to it and you can't go wrong. On the way back from Inverness we came back along the B862 and B852 (known as "General Wades Military Roads"). These single-track roads follow the shoreline of the loch. Very closely. Poor Jane. She really wasn't feeling very well by the end of it ;) It was uhhm.... fun! For me, at least.
We stopped at a layby for a bit, by the shoreline. Got some pics which should be fabulous. Think it would be a nice place to have a picnic :)
When we got back to the B&B we crashed for a bit, relaxed and went out for dinner. Being Jane's birthday and Valentine's day, wanted to do something special. I'd called up a local restaurant whose menu was in our room, and they only did a limited menu in the off-season. We got lucky as we were walking to find a cash machine, as we walked past
The Bothy.
Yummy. Fantastic food. I had haggis stuffed mushrooms along with a pork, apple and black pudding stack, jane had venison pate then barbary duck in port and orange sauce. Wow. Then there was the Bothy Sweet. mmmmmmmmmmmmm. Individual ickle cheesecake served with ice-cream, nuts and something that felt and looked like solid chocolate. SO good.
We sat in the bar and drank loads of single malts. I'm particularly fond of the Highland Park and the Balvenie, and then Talisker. Yummmmm.
Sunday morning - Brekkie was fabulous and full of loveliness. It was really foggy out, couldn't see beyond the end of the street when we got up, but it cleared OK. Drove back towards the south more slowly than we did on the way up. Partially because it was light, and we could see ;) Also found a random monument to the commandos in the top of a hill, in the middle of the highlands. Random.
Stopped at my parents' place. Seeing as the A82 is about 20centimetres away from Helensburgh I couldn't go that close and not stop. Had a cuppa tea and a chat. Home.
It was lovely, but I will definitely do it for 4 days next time.
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pmsumner at 08:24am on 17/02/2004
tired