Having bottled out of John O'Groats I won a more relaxed day for myself today. Just about 3-4 hours down the Great Glen. mainly consisting of Loch Ness and its legendary inhabitant.
My posh hotel was next to the Curiously named River Ness, and like everything else today it was picturesque.
I had slept soundly so was a bit surprised when I woke up to a car on the way to becoming an igloo
I don't have much in the way of scrapers and what have you but modernish cars deal with very well with all this. OK, a bit of snow in the boot and care needed opening windows but all clear after a gew minutes, though I had to clear the windscreen washers. When I was a lad my friend had a Vauxhall Victor, where the screen washers were powered by the vacuum in the engine. This meant if you accelerated hard (well as hard as a Vauxhall Victor can manage) from low engine speed you could hose people on the pavement. Not of course we would have done anything so ungentlemanly - none of us were reprobates like Theresa May.
So down to the Loch. I had sent an email to Monsty as I nickname him but i believe he was spending a week away in Narnia so we didn't meet on this occasion. The lake was not disturbed by serpent activity therefore.
Looking quite majestic anyway. There was snow around bit it was what my father used to call 3-ply. 2 clear tracks and a pile in the middle of the car.
It's a long lake and when you get past it there are others. I stopped by another pretty one and looked up its name
This one is called Loch Lochy which seems to me lacking in imagination. I will always think of it hereafter as Lochy McLochface. I was thinking of skipping up one of those mountains but unfortunately they were on the other side of the loch and I hadn't bought my swimming costume. Would have been very bracing because the temperature was showing anything from -5 to -2 degrees today despite the tropical sunshine we enjoyed all day.
I am a bit of a tree enthusiast and there were really wonderful ones throughout this trip, especially on the North Yorkshire moors where I omitted to take any pictures.
I think that one compensates.
Eventually I arrived in Oban, mid afternoon. Looked very good
Then I espied something weird: on the top of the hill I saw what looked about a Roman Coliseum (or collosuem if you prefer) which seemed to suggest Hadrian got a bit further up than his wall. The mystery is explained in my hotel information. It is called McCaig's Tower after John Stuart McCaig had it built between 1895 and his appointment in heaven or hell in 1902. It seems family members who inherited the £6000 he left to build a roof and/or make sculptures thought they would rather spend the money on something more practical, and the court agreed. It is now maintained by the local council and is a popular attraction.
Apparently the views are good and it is one of the best follies I have heard of, so I will take a look in the morning.
Time for a wee dram and some comestibles to sustain me in this small and rather chilly hotel room!
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