Loch Lomond Cruising
From World Tour 2008 in Loch Lomond, United Kingdom on Oct 13 '08
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The first activity of the day was our river cruise down Loch Lomond. We set off on our boat at 10am for our hour cruise. It was quite chilly and overcast, and the light fog/mist in the air cast an eerie feeling over the Loch. There was little wind which gave a glassy look to the water. We sat for a while downstairs in the cabin of the boat, and enjoyed a coffee with a hefty swig of scottish whiskey (burn your throat!), before venturing upstairs to take in the wonderful views from the roof.
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After this we set off for our scenic bus ride up to the highlands of Scotland, across Ronnoch Moor where we stop at Glencoe's "Valley of the Weeping". There are locals here having lunch after returning from a morning hike in the area. We also spotted some colourful dots of people heading off up into to hills on their walk.
Phew... that's some strong coffee...
We continue across the West Highland fault line to Fort William where we stop for lunch. This town is named after a nearby military base which is now no longer in use. We stop at the Nevis Bar for lunch where we sipped on whiskey and whiskey creme liquor. This town is the centre of outdoor activities, but is experiencing a downturn of 80% in tourism. A lot of stores are having end of season and closing down sales, so we can't help but wander through some of these shops and look for bargains. Before long we realise that our time is up and we have to rush back to the meeting place for the bus.
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Onward we travel and before long are brought to a viewing platform for Ben Nevis, the tallest mountain in Scotland at over 4000ft. The top of this mountain is rarely seen as it is always clouded in with "Dragon's Breath" (high cloud). Here also we visit the Commando Memorial, a statue dedicated to all commandos lost in service. There is a nearby memorial ring where plaques have been laid commemorating individuals, with the latest one lost only a couple of months earlier this year in Afghanistan.
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We head off then to our destination for the evening. This has changed from our original planned hotel. Mike informs us that the hotel where we were supposed to stay had a little problem - a fire which wiped out their kitchen. The tour company had been madly trying to find alternate accomodation for us, and this was found just 45min further down the road in a small town called Granton-on-Spey. We rolled in here at 5pm to what Mike described as a "small scottish quaint hotel - where to get to your room from reception will be like a rabbit warren". After checking in (after walking through the bar, across the dining room and through 4 fire doors, turning left and right until we found our room at the end of a corridor".
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We decided to head out for a walk into the town straight away as we had spent a lot of time on the bus today and needed to stretch our legs. Most of the shops in the town were closed, except for the local fish'n'chip shop and the bottle shop, where a large number of our tour peers stopped to buy wine and champagne. Being up in the highlands the temperature was quite cold, so we headed back to our hotel early.
Dinner was to be served at 7:30pm, and this was our tour Highlight Dinner. This ended up being quite disappointing as we just ended up ordering off the restaurant menu. The hotel had made the effort though of arranging a piper to pipe us in to dinner, and also served an extra course of Haggis which most people just picked at. I imagine that our dinner plans would have been much different if we had been accomodated at the original hotel.
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After dinner we stayed in the dining room to listen to the evening entertainment. This was a local guy who sang scottish songs and the like while playing either his guitar or a small mandolin. This ended at 9:30pm and we all headed to our rooms and called it a night.
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