Scotland – Day Four
Posted on: May 25, 2008No comments yet
May 25, 2008 – It was a beautiful morning in Loch Ness, with the typical early morning fog settling over the Loch Ness lake, where one of the most famous monsters to never be discovered lives. The monster, or better known as Nessie, is said to live in the dark murky lake where depths exceed 800 feet. Today we planned to take a tour of the museum, and attempt to do what millions others have failed; capture evidence that Nessie does exist!
To help us with our search, we met with Robert Bremner, the managing director of the Loch Ness Exhibition Centre & Dumnadrochit Hotel. Bremner grew up locally and after getting his Master’s degree at Edinburg University, he immediately got a job at the Centre. The Centre is beautiful with seven different exhibitions, plenty of footage and pictures to enjoy. There were so many different versions of hoaxes of people who claimed to see Nessie, with the museum documenting the most famous stories. I tried to draw as much information out of Robert Bremner about whether he truly believes Nessie exists. He doesn’t believe that a monster lives in the lake, but he does believe that there is something behind all these stories living in the lake.
Before we were to go out to the lake for a closer view in our search for Nessie, we just had to stop by the gift shop. There were so many souvenirs of Nessie I just had to get something for my kids. I almost got my entire family matching Scottish kilts and dresses, but I decided that we may not fit in back home so I just took some pictures.
We met with Skipper John Minshull, the captain of “Deepscan” the boat that would take us on our search over the lake. Deepscan is equipped with sonar equipment that would almost certainly find Nessie if she were in the lake. Minshull was skeptical that a large monster exists because so few fish were in the lake. He didn’t think there was enough for the monster to eat and this was disappointing for us to learn. He took us to Urquhart castle for a better view of the lake, and climbing to the top of the castle rewarded us with a fantastic view of the lake. Looking at old photos that seemingly captured Nessie but were very low quality, we realized that a HD camera would certainly give a sharper view of what the pictures really showed. It probably is just water breaking on top of the surface, and I hope Nessie won’t be mad at me for saying that! We concluded at the end of the day that there was certainly something mysterious in the lake, but we were not going to find Nessie today.
We went back on the road on our way to Pitlochry where we were going to play in St. Andrews tomorrow. We saw the famous Inverness Golf Course and just couldn’t resist the temptation to play 9 holes and warm up before St. Andrews. The golf pro at Inverness didn’t seem to think our game was up to par, when he met us on the second tee and offered us the opportunity to buy insurance in case we sliced a ball into the homes along the fairway! It was quite a funny joke and fortunately we didn’t regret declining the insurance.
After playing the front nine, we spent the rest of our evening touring one of the most beautiful highland castles, The Atholl Palace Hotel where we spent the night. This hotel is unique because it offers the true Medieval experience of what it is like living in the 1500s. You should be sure to stay at one of these hotels if you are in Scotland and have the experience of what it was like being a member of the Royal family in these days! The castle pub was the perfect way to wrap up our day, giving us the chance to toast to a pint of locally brewed beer. Here’s to the second half of our journey!
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