Inverness Exploring (Day 12, Part 2 of 2)

 

We finished our bike ride around 2:00 p.m..  Ann was scheduled to pick us up at 4:00 so we had a couple of hours to explore.  I noticed that many towns in Scotland begin with "inver" and asked Ann about that.  It means mouth of the river.  So Inverness is simply the mouth of the River Ness.

 

 

 

The current Inverness Castle sits on a cliff overlooking the River Ness where castles have been built since 1057.  This castle was built in 1836.  It is currently closed to visitors while a new visitor center is under construction.

The Columba Hotel was originally built in 1881.

Inverness is a lovely town.  The River Walk is beautiful and relaxing.

The Inverness War Memorial commemorates the residents of Inverness who died in the First and Second World Wars. The names of those who died in other wars like peace operations are also written on the memorial.

We walked some more and met a lovely Scottish couple.  They welcomed us to their town and talked about searching for family.

 

Have I mentioned the beautiful weather?

This is the Inverness Cathedral.  Construction began in 1866 and it opened for services in 1869.

We then found the Faith, Hope and Charity statues that stand in Ness Bank Gardens directly next to Ness Bank Church.  FYI this "bank" has nothing to do with a financial institution, but the bank of the Ness River.

 

The YMCA commissioned local sculptor Andrew Davidson to create three statues embodying the Christian virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity to go on top of the Inverness branch of the YMCA in about 1868.

The building was demolished in 1955 and the statues were transferred to the Burgh Surveyor's yard, where they remained until 1961. At that time, an antique collector from Orkney acquired the statues.  The statues were returned to Inverness in 2011.

The statues are not in the order as listed on the base.  From left to right they are Charity, Faith and Hope.  Charity has a flaming heart, with children, gathering fruit.  Faith has a cross, the Bible, pointing upward.  Hope has as anchor, harp, flaming brand.

We finally decided we need a little something to eat.  We found the River Grill. Coffee and tomato soup hit the spot!

We made our way back to our meeting spot and Ann was waiting to take us back to the ship.  Another wonderful day that ended with dinner in the dining room.  I don't remember what we ate, but my notebook says, "Dinner in the dining room = A+"  I do remember dessert, and my notebook says, "Berry cobbler = A++"

Ticket to Ride ~ Cycling to the Loch Ness (Day 12, Part 1 of 2)

Day 12 was another epic adventure!  We rented bikes again, this time in search of the famous Loch Ness Monster, AKA Nessie...

 

Our shipped docked in Invergordon, Scotland and our destination was Inverness about 25 miles away.  Since we were in port on a Sunday, public transportation was very limited.  I knew this in advance and found a taxi company that we could pre-book.  This time they waited at the port for us!

It was a cool 48 degrees when we docked, slighty cool and cloudy.  We met our taxi and had a wonderful driver, Ann.  Ann gave us so much information on the drive.  She knew we were renting bikes and even had a hand drawn map for us.

I hired our bikes from Ticket to Ride in Inverness.  It took a little while to get our bikes as there were others picking up rentals as well.  We met a man named David who was on our cruise ship and saw him several times while we were out riding.  This was another enjoyable ride.  There were many dedicated and protected bike paths so I felt very safe while once again riding on the left side of the road.

 

The Loch Ness is a large fresh water loch (lake) that extends for approximately 23 miles.  It is the largest volume lake in the British Isles.  Of course it's most famous for being home to the Loch Ness Monster.  The earliest reports of a creature go back to the 6th century.  Nessie's existence has been debated for decades, even when "pictures" have surfaced.  There have been numerous searches and studies, but no one has ever found the creature.

A number of explanations have been suggested to account for sightings of the creature. According to Ronald Binns, a former member of the Loch Ness Phenomena Investigation Bureau, there is probably no single explanation of the monster. Binns wrote two sceptical books, the 1983 The Loch Ness Mystery Solved, and his 2017 The Loch Ness Mystery Reloaded. In these he contends that an aspect of human psychology is the ability of the eye to see what it wants, and expects, to see.

 

We rode about 10 miles until we came to Dores Beach and got our first good look at the famous Loch Ness.

 

Any picture I've ever seen with Nessie has always been murky and dark.  It was cloudy out, but so pretty.  The only "monster" we encounter came along as we were enjoying some coffee and a Cliff Bar...

We hung out at the Loch Ness for a while, enjoying the beautiful day.

Our fellow cruiser, David, rode up and took a few pictures of the two of us.

 

 It really is a beautiful loch!

We got back on our bikes and rode a few more miles.  The road was narrow but there was very little traffic and drivers continued to be courteous.

It really is amazing!

We made a pit stop at Dores Beach before continuing back to Inverness.

The ride back was just as enjoyable.

Our ship mate, David, caught up with us as we were making our way back into Inverness.  The bike shop had given us some tips about riding along the River Ness, so we tried to make that happen.  Unfortunately, we ended up on gravel and our bikes weren't made for that.  We started seeing the beauty of the city and since we had already ridden over 25 miles we decided to return our bikes so we could do some exploring on foot.  I'll share that tomorrow.