Loch Ness Cruise, Culloden battlefields & Bronze Age Clava Cairns

Not a great nights sleep last night. I seemed to have picked up a dry cough which doesn't last long, but is quite annoying. It seems to be in my chest, but I feel OK. Bought some lemsip which will hopefully knock it out in the coming days.

Fun fact - when I bought it, I had to wait for approval from someone within the store!! Thankfully she did approve (must've been my trustworthy face) 😏.

Good news is today's weather is fantastic. Sun is shining, barely a cloud in the sky. We head off for our one hour 11am cruise very excited. Our guide Nick is a happy-go-lucky guy with a fantastic deep Scottish accent and you can tell straight away he loves his job. He quickly informs us this is the best day on Loch Ness Lake this year. The water looks like glass and this is the view as we head out - great start to our cruise:

As we venture around the Loch we discover lots of fun facts about the Lake. For example:

it lies in the Glen Mor (or Great Glen) which bisects the Highlands and forms part of the system of waterways across Scotland that civil engineer Thomas Telford linked by means of the Caledonian Canal (opened 1822)
its depth is 240 metres and length 36km
it has the largest volume of fresh water in Great Britain
a 50+ woman holds the record of just over 19hrs for swimming the length of the Lake
both Hiroshima and Chernobyl radiation fallout has been found within the sediment of the Lake

Here's the sonar shot of how deep we are about 15 mins in to our cruise - 232m!! Nick also mentioned the Lake is 39m deep about 10m from shore - yikes!!

One of the fantastic things Nick does about once a year, is provide a 'Rays of Sunshine' wish for a kid (like our 'Make a wish' foundation). In 2019 one of the kids wanted to have a sighting of the Loch Ness Monster, so he donned its head on his back and scuba dived in the Lake for an hour. Here's a shot of the kid who couldn't believe his luck (look in the background to see Nicks handy work):

Here's Urquhart Castle from the Lake:

Fantastic 60 mins that I didn't want to end. Here's the closest I got to the Monster:

Next stop was the Culloden battlefields.

The course of British, European and world history was changed at Culloden on 16 Apr 1746. A ferocious war had come to Scotland, dividing families and setting clan against clan.

It was here that the Jacobite army took their last stand to reclaim the thrones of Britain from the Hanoverians for a Stuart king. The Jacobites fought to restore the exiled James VIII as king and were led by Prince Charles Edward Stuart, James's son; George II's government army (led by the Duke of Cumberland, George's son) was equally determined to stop this happening.

In spring 1746, the Jacobite rising was in trouble. The decision to return north from Derby, rather than press on to London, had marked a turning point in their fortunes. Despite victory at the Battle of Falkirk, the Jacobites had not capitalised on their success. Now Charles was heading to meet Duke of Cumberland's troops in the Highlands, to prevent them from taking Inverness.

Many Jacobite troops were still far from Inverness and were urgently summoned to join the Prince. Food and money were in short supply and the army was not a full force - few commanders thought they could win a battle in this state. In contrast, Cumberland marched his troops from Aberdeen in good order. They were closing in on the Jacobite army for what would surely be a decisive battle.

Rather than risk a pitched battle in their weakened state, the Jacobites agreed on a final desperate plan: a surprise night attack. As dawn broke, their progress was too slow and they had to turn back. There was still time for the Jacobites to draw back to Inverness and regain their strength at a safe distance. Bitter arguments broke out between the senior commanders - even the French envoy pleaded for the Prince to withdraw, but he was determined and took the decision to fight there and then.

Many of his soldiers were exhausted from the night march, while others were away looking for food or had yet to arrive in the area. Some Jacobite leaders favoured a retreat to high ground. The Prince preferred to fight where they stood, on the moor at Culloden. With Cumberland's army in sight, the pipers began to play and the tired army struggled into position.

At around 1pm, the Jacobite artillery opened fire on government soldiers. The government responded with their own cannon and the Battle of Culloden began. Hardly an hour had passed between the first shots and the final flight of the Prince's army. Charles watched from safety as the Duke of Cumberland emerged victorious. Although a short battle by European standards, it was an exceptionally blood one that changed life in the Highlands forever.

Plaque centre bottom reads: "The Battle of Culloden was fought on this moor 16th April 1746. The graves of the gallant highlanders who fought for Scotland & Prince Charlie are marked by the name of their Clans".

Says "Field of the English they were buried here"

The walk around the moor and seeing all the different clans involved and reading how the battle strategy played out was interesting and so sad. Such loss of life.

Our last car stopover for the day was to Clava Cairns. I had no idea what is was, so let me inform you:

Clava Cairns or the Prehistoric Burial Cairns of Bulnuaran of Clava, are a group of three Bronze Age cairns located near Inverness. It's a fantastic example of the distant history of Highland Scotland, dating back about 4,000 years.

The cemetery was used in two periods. At around 2000 BC, a row of large cairns was built, three of which can still be seen today. A thousand years later, the cemetery was reused and new burials were placed in some of the existing cairns and three smaller monuments were built including a 'kerb cairn'.

Excavations have found evidence for farming on the site before any of these monuments were built. The settlement was directly replaced by the cairns and it even seems possible that some of the material used to build them had been taken from demolished houses. Here's my photos of these cairns: