Day 39...A Loch Ness Monster!!!-4th August

Woke up with the help of the mobile phone alarm, and also the various rustlings and rattlings of my roommate who I can't understand. She diddle dee dee'd me and I just made what I hoped was appropriate noises at the right spots. She must have thought me quite an idiot.

Wend and knocked on Nates dorm and we both had showers and packed. We figured out that sleeping in separate bunks in hostels with communal showers between 30 people would be 35 pounds. No breakfast so add another 10-15 pounds. Which equates to roughly 45-50 pounds yes? A private room in a hostel dorm with no breakfast (if we wanted to sleep together and not go pounding on strangers doors) is 65 pounds. A B&B costs 50-60 pounds and includes breakfast. And that breakfast is toast and bacon and cereal and yoghurt and eggs which takes you through most of the day. So the consideration is if you want to pay the 0-10 pound difference to sleep together, have your own shower, experience how the locals live in their own home, and not share it with other foreigners. (PS its surprising the amount of elderly hostellers we are finding. Not just the broke 20 year old youths, but 60 to 70 year olds backpacking around! Respect!)
I still wasn't fully convinced of the value yet, so booked ahead for another hostel at Loch Lomond where we calculated we would be.

Anyways we set off in the morning heading northwest to Dufftown. We saw a sign saying "welcome to the eastern highlands" but there was no land that was high to be seen! We got all excited but the land was virtually as flat as a pancake. Just more "farm friends" type farmland with rolling hills and stone fences. I thought it would be mountainous and maybe we weren't north enough but when we saw glimpes up north and saw the ocean, I knew that was it. I was worried as we were heading west and this was as high as we had time to go. Maybe the big scottish highlands was much further north on the upper bit of the island and we would miss it? However, it was really pretty countryside and even better when we got a little bit hilly and saw the whisky trail road signs. Yeah!

Johnnie Walker isn't a single malt whiskey. Its actually broken up by several distilleries so there is no place to go and visit. We went to Glenfiddich near Dufftown instead, which we ended up being really happy about. By the end of it, we realised we couldn't have done better! Glenfiddich was nestled in some hills along a small river front. The distillery is family owned since its inception, and the building dates from the 1800's. The tour was free and taken by a lovely Scottish lass wearing a kilt. We watched a propaganda video which was kinda cool (distillery made by 4 hands, 3000 bricks etc etc) but showed all this typical Scottish countryside, which looked nothing like what we were sitting in! hee hee.

Single malt, for single malt whiskey - means the distillery pretty much does everything. It even has its own guys making the wooden barrels, not outsourcing like others. It is the only highland distillery that does everything on its own premises, so we picked the best distillery to see. The Scottish lady took us around and showed us everything on how it was made. It kicked ass all over the Guinness museum to me. Rather than a fake museum, they showed us how it was made and let us stick our heads in vats and barrels to see all the different processes. The whisky as its being made is kind of smelly! We saw huge vats and pipes and massive two storey barrels. Apparently another great whisky maker fell into one of his own 2 storey barrels and died, coz they are full of carbon dioxide. The metal vat-thingys where the alcohol is distiled has to be exactly the same shape, or it changes the character of the whisky. For example, if a horse had kicked the original metal thing, all the other ones would have to have a kick mark in the same spot too, or it changes the flavour. Some people are so worried about it, that they wouldn't even wipe the metal things down lest they put a dent in it.

We couldn't take pictures in the ageing room as a barrel loses 40% of its whisky to evaporation and the room was thick with alcohol. They didn't want an explosion in there! The place smelt fantastic though and we tried to breathe as much as we could in! At the end of the tour, we all got a free dram of Glenfiddich to swill and taste. I made everyone laugh by saying I wanted to put Coke with it. Blasphemy!

Nathan had a great time seeing all the whisky in its various forms and the big distillery barrels and chambers. He nearly died to go into the ageing room and even got to smell a barrel that held whisky from 1931! He drank both our whiskys as I was a wuss and couldn't manage it straight. So I drove us up to Elgin then along to Inverness which is the start of Loch Ness! On the way I saw a farm which had some big aimals that I thought were weirdly shaped cows for a second. Then Nathan suddenly shouted "Scottish pork! Scottish free range pork! Pull over!" then ran giggling like Homer Simpson over to them. He was pretty excited at the free range aspect as pigs are usually in stys. I think becuase of that too, they didn't stink. They were massive though! You should have seen them run, with fat rolling everwhere! They wre pretty friendly too, but didn't get too close to the electric fence/ One of them let out a quality oink which had us both in giggles. It was weird though - while I was cooing and crooning at them, I was still looking forward to my bacon breakfast the next day.

Inverness was quite large, so we grabbed a sandwich and headed down the west side from th north to the south. I was feeling tired and cranky - a first for this trip, so I thought Loch Ness looked like any other pine studded lake. It wasn't moody or pretty at all. There were a few logging and industrial sites along it too. But then again the Loch isn't famous for being pretty, it's famous for a monster! But to me, it didn't look monstery (although I'm not sure what monstery is supposed to look like!)

We stopped at the Ness centre but didn't go in as it was so pricey. But next door was a heritage centre so we went in to check out Nathans history. He is descended from the McPhails in northern Scotland. Off the outer herbrides actually, in Stornoway. The elderly lady helped us out with some info. Nathan shares the same tartan as the McLarens, the McSomethings and McSomething elses. All I remember is McLaren coz its cool. The McPhails had their own coat of arms though. We were worried it would be something crap, like a bunny or something but it was a really proud looking coat with several stags and a knights helmet. Lots of green and gold. Across from the centre was Urqhart Castle which didn't look too imposing or moody as it was a bright sunny day (the castle is the one pictured in all those misty gloomy Ness shots). Tey wanted to sting us 6 pounds each to go down to it and were trying to build up hedges along the hill so we couldn't see it without paying. Bastards. We bitched about them being tightarses while we stood with the other tightarses and took photos over the fence. Hah!

After that we kept heading south and it got much better. It got morehilly and moodier and the blue water turned into an inky blue. We stoppd by the roadside and scrambled a bit down a rocky incline with angry spiky bushes. There we sat ona rock and had coffee and muffins. Every time a wave lapped against a rock we joked if it was a monster! We drove a bit further, then stopped again when we reached a spot where we could access the water. The whole drive, bar Urqhart was a steep drop into the water from the road, covered in spikes and bracken. So we climbed down this spot with some rocks and were joined by a USA family. We stuck out feet in the water - ooh it was cold! It hurt our feet! We also threw some stones in the water but we didn't wake anything up...

After that we started our drive to Loch Lomond - and found a suprise on the way! The Argyll Forest region turned into massive mountains, some 800-1000m high with big swooping valleys. They were treeless, just covered in heather and rocks. It looked exactly how I pictured Scotland! Finally! I could see the lads from Rob Roy scattering into the mist at the top of the mountains. When we hit that region, we hit light wind and rain, and clouds of mist were rolling over the tops of the peaks. It was a real change in mood. It was too beautiful for words. At one point we slowed around a corner and a magnificent stag ran up the embankment infront of our car, and over the hill to the other side. cool. No photo though, our camera was too slow. We stopped at a little pub and ate haggis! Not bad, just like sausage really. Very similar to the black pudding in Ireland). We also passed the banks of lochs with grey and white pebbles, the water all misty and little houses perched on the side.

We drove down the west side of Loch Lomond with the water somethims only a few metres from our car, glassy too. That area was just as pretty but not as awe-inspiring as those mountains. We stopped so many times in that area that it got dark near the bottom of Loch Lomond. We drove for ages in the dark to get to the hostel we had booked - which ended up being near the top of the loch on the east side! We had to go the route we went anyway, the roads were set out that way. THe last bit searching for the hostel though, was nothing but a one lane road in pitch blackness. Try searching for a sign in that! We kept thinking we had missed it. The hostel was a huge house at the end of the road perchd on the side of Loch Lomond. I almost ran over a small brown thing pulling in, which meanderd into the bushes when I stopped. i think it was a hedgehog?

We got in at 11pm, just in time before they closed reception. Phew! I was in a huge dorm with about 10 girls and Nates was the same. We went straight to bed.