Day 4 - Glencoe to Inverness

After checking out of the hotel we did the remaining walks recommended by the visitor centre. One was around a former quarry Urquhart Castle and the other around the Ballachulish Peninsular.

Incline Arch where the slate was lowered to the ships in the harbour

Quarry lake

Tadpoles in quarry lake

Quarry Walk

Ballachulish Peninsular Walk

Ballachulish Harbour

We set off for Inverness and had several stops on the way. The weather has been glorious – very warm and sunny.

First stop was at Spean Bridge where there is a viewpoint looking over the Nevis mountain range and then at the nearby Commander Monument.

Nevis Range - Ben Nevis on right.

Commander Monument

Moving northwards we stopped at a viewpoint over Loch Lochy where we had our lunch. Just after arriving a police car arrived and stopped the traffic going in the opposite direction to us. There was no traffic coming from the Fort William direction. Paul said it was either an accident or an abnormal load. We decided to move on in case it was an abnormal load as we didn’t want to be stuck behind it for miles. Just as we rejoined the road we saw another police car approaching with at least 2 lorries carrying something very wide. So we were very lucky and managed to avoid this.

View over Loch Lochy

Next stops were at Loch Ness but there are very few places where you can get a good view of the loch as there are trees and tall vegetation all along. We did find 2 places, one of which had a memorial to John Cobb who died while breaking the World Water Speed record in 1952 on Loch Ness after reaching a speed of 206 miles an hour. The record was then broken by Donald Campbell on Coniston Water some years later.

Loch Ness

Memorial to John Cobb

As it was such a lovely day we decided to visit Urquhart Castle. I had seen that with our English Heritage membership we could get half price entrance if we booked online. We had planned to do this tomorrow and I intended to get online tickets tonight. We went to pay and showed our membership cards but we were given free entry. After seeing a film we walked around the ruins of the castle and got some really good views of Loch Ness.