4. Inverness and The Highlands (updated)

I left Edinburgh and headed north to the Highlands.  My bus arrived in Inverness, but I had to rent a car to get to the West Coast and reach my little hostel off the main routes.

I asked for a very small, economical car, like a Fiat 500, but they gave me this Citroen "pocket rocket" as the rental company called it. It has a 1.6 litre diesel engine with lots of low-end torque.  Despite this, I averaged 4.4 l/ 100 km for the two days of zooming up and down the Highland hills. Puts my 2.0 liter Suzuki to shame at 8.6 l / 100 km for similar driving.

Hadrian and Finn think sometimes I drive on the wrong side of the road. So this was great - not only did I have drive on the wrong side of the road, I had to drive on the wrong side of the CAR! This was very scary for the first half hour (I'd driven a Morris Minor in the UK a long, long time ago), but after that I was pretty good. Except that I kept instinctively checking my mirrors and going for the stick-shift and window buttons in the wrong places.

Once I got out of Inverness and into the Highlands, it was glorious.

John in The Highlands (cue the bagpipes...)

In the distance among the clouds is the mountain where I'm heading to.

This was my little Hostel West of Dundonnell.

Although I don't have ancestors (that I know of) north of Inverness, I really wanted to go hiking in the Highlands.  I picked this hostel because it's right beside An Teallach (pronounced "Ad Chalockk"), one of the biggest but more accessible "Munros", so named after the man would first started cataloguing the Highland peaks over 3,000 feet.  This one starts right at sea level, and you climb over 1 km vertical to reach the summit.

Here I am about a third of the way up, with part of the Atlantic Ocean in the background and the cloud cover still above me.  That didn't last for long.

As I climbed, the different peaks of An Teallach came into view and became more and more impressive. Also, a damp, misty wind started to blow between up the different sides of the mountain. I saw quite a few farmers' sheep at the start, then further up deer and finally mountain goats.  I didn't get any good pictures because of the mist.  They would appear in my periphery, like ghosts.

This is looking down at ~60 degrees about 50 m vert. or 10 min. to climb to the summit. I came up an easier route ;) Near here I met a German climber zooming down past me.  We talked for a bit and he was upset that the trail was poorly marked, and "...in the Alps, we would never have markers missing for the full route".

At the peak of An Teallach (pronounced "An Chee-lakh"), over 1 kilometre vertical from the sea down below

It's sometimes hard to tell how steep it is in mountain shots. The top of this cairn is flat, so you can see how steep it starts to descend into the mist. On the way down, echoes of a mountain goat lamb bleating had me thinking I was moving away from it, but then I realised I was between the lamb and a ram.  The ram started moving towards me from about 100 m.  I quickly went away from both.  I don't give me much chance of outrunning a mountain goat on a mountain.

I couldn't see 150 metres for the last half of the climb because of the mist / clouds, but when I got back down 6 hours later, it was a beautiful sunset. I went for a nice drive up the coast.

Looking back East towards my B and B

Looking North across Little Loch Broom

A beach looking out onto The Minch straight towards the Hebredes and the Atlantic Ocean

I ran into a fellow James who was doing acoustic analysis up the road in advance of a potential hydro project - they measure the current ambient sounds and project the impact of having a hydro project in the vicinity. James was sorely missing cigarettes, so when I went up the coatst, I found a little general store and picked some up from him.  This small gesture led to us having dinner together and a fine conversation about Glasgow (where he lives), and Referendum (although not a Scot, he can vote because he lives in Scotland), and music.

This is the Dundonnell Hotel 2 km up the road from my hostel.

After my climb, I returned to the Dundonnell Hotel (the only establishment within an hour's drive) and had a cuppa Earl Grey - so civilized out in the wilderness!

That night, some of the locals got together at the hotel and played some traditional songs.

My hostel's keeper is playing guitar at left, and the owner of the Dundonnell Hotel is next to him singing.  Between them, they played about 10 instruments, which seems common with these improvised groups.  I found such musical get-togethers in both cities and countryside, which was wonderful.

After a terrific time in the Highlands, the next day I jumped in the car and took some backroads back towards Inverness. The back roads may be partially single lane, where you have to pull over tp intermittent passing lanes. On my way back to Inverness, I was able to stop at a town where research indicates one of my ancestors is from, and also drive along Loch Ness and see Urquhart Castle.

This is a church (a "Kirk") in Kilmorack converted into a contemporary art gallery.  It appeared to be the only building in a town one of my ancestors is possibly from. 

This is Urquhart Castle which governed much of the nearby forest around Loch Ness for the king, but struggled against repeated raids from the McDonald Clan of the North. Nope - no Nessie!

Inverness is a medium size town situated where the River Ness flows into the ocean. It was nice to walk through with beautiful neighbourhoods.  I only stayed a day, but was excited to find out where I was staying overnight.

Inverness

Would you believe the room I stayed in at my hostel was called The Hobbit?  The rest of the hostel was in a nice house with a big kitchen, a modern laundry, and a lovely treed neighbourhood.  There was a young German couple that was very displeased with the accommodations and asked to be moved, but I find this much cooler than The Hilton!  

Room for 5 hobbitses and nothing else! Germans have the highest standards / expectations it seems. This appears to be both a blessing (e.g. the quality of their cars, the reliability of their train system) and a curse (traveling through such "backward" countries, ex-husbands!).

This is from the bus ride from Inverness to my last stop in Scotland, Glasgow.  Notice that the middle "tree" is a cell tower in disguise.  This is a nice touch compared to our ugly towers.