#inverness

We arrived in Inverness and checked into our hotel, which was on the outskirts of town.  We drove into the city to take a look around and plan for the next couple of days.   Our first stop was Leakey’s Bookshop – the second largest secondhand bookstore in Scotland which is housed in an old church. 

We wandered through town and eventually ended up outside the Inverness Castle which looks much more modern than all the other castles we had seen.  

The original castle on this site, built in the 12th century was destroyed by the Jacobite army in 1746.  The deep well and parts of the bastion wall are all that remain.  It was rebuilt as a courthouse and county hall in 1834.  The stonework was restored in 1986. 

Outside the castle is a monument honoring Flora MacDonald, who was renowned for aiding Bonnie Prince Charlie’s escape after the Battle of Culloden.  In Outlander, as in real life, Flora rowed Prince Charles to the Isle of Skye while he was disguised as a woman. In the background you can see the more modern stonework of the castle.

From the castle we had a view of the cathedral on the other side of the river.

We had a nice dinner next door to our hotel – what seemed to us to be classic Scottish fare.  I had chicken and leek pie, Tim had lentil pie – both were very good.

After dinner we watched a world cup game in the hotel bar area (Canada vs. Bosnia Herzogovina).  I’m pretty sure everyone in the bar thought we were all Canadian!

Saturday we started our day at Culloden Field -- anyone that’s read or watched Outlander or heard/read anything about Scottish history will recognize the name.   On April 16, 1746 the course of history was changed as the Jacobite army battled the British army here, dividing families and setting clan against clan.   Civil War had threatened since the 1630s due to political and religious divisions.  The Catholic King, James Stewart had fled to France.   His son, Charles Stewart returned to Scotland in 1745 seeking to restore his father to the British thorn.   He gathered troops, known as the Jacobites around the country and they gained control of parts of Scotland.  But the Jacobite rising ended with a swift and bloody battle at Culloden in which at least 1500 Jacobites were killed and 50 British soldiers in less than an hour.  We went on a guided tour of the battlefield; our guide pointed out where the lines of soldiers from both sides were and gave us a great view of the history leading up to the battle, as well as the battle itself.

Leanach Cottage stands now where maps show there was a farm building at the time of the battle which was used as a field hospital.

Around the field there are markers for various clans who fought in the battle.  However, our guide explained that although there are mass graves in the field, the dead were not necessarily identified and buried by clan.

We ended our tour of the battlefield outside the museum.  This wall of the museum is a subtle tribute to those killed in the battle.  You can see that there are some bricks in the wall which are offset so they stick out.  On the front portion of the wall 50 bricks protrude in representation of the British soldiers.  There is then a brief smooth section of wall, and then the section representing the Jacobite army, with 1500 bricks protruding.  Some of those protruding bricks are touching each other, representing brothers, sons and fathers, or other family members who fought and died together. 

We spent some time inside the museum – as you walked through the designated route it was like a timeline of the history of what was happening on the British side on the left and on the Jacobite side on the right.  There were also displays of different types of weapons and a diorama of the battlefield.   Photos were not allowed inside the museum.

From Culloden we drove about 20 minutes to Fort George.   Built after the Jacobite rising (1748-69) to suppress future Jacobite rebellions, it was designed to be impenetrable and was the largest fortress in Northern Europe.   The star-shaped fort covers about 42 acres on a peninsula jutting into the Moray Firth and has more than a kilometer of ramparts. 

In the late 1700’s some soldiers were allowed to marry “on the strength of the regiment”, and their wives shared their rooms, earning half-rations by doing domestic chores.  There were no dining halls at that time – men and their wives prepared meals over fires in their rooms.  During WWI the barracks became for soldiers only – 6 men shared a room with cots that would fold up into chairs during the day.

There is a chapel

And even a pet cemetery where soldiers and officers buried beloved pets and regimental mascots.

The Grand Magazine building was used for storing 2500 barrels of gun powder.   It was lower than all the other buildings in the fort, making it a more difficult target to hit.

Fort George remains an active British army base.   I saw this soldier walking from the mess hall to his barracks.   Married soldiers are now housed off-site.

As we returned to our car in the parking lot we had to laugh at this sign, although it was not the first one we’d seen.  Coming from California, it is hard to imagine the fire danger was extreme when we were in a country where having your rain jacket handy and waterproof footwear is a must!

From Fort George we drove to Clava Cairns, a 4000-year-old cemetery complex featuring 3 main burial cairns.  They are surrounded by stone circles and standing stones, notable for their alignment with the midwinter sunset.   It has gained modern fame as the potential inspiration for the “Craigh na Dun” stones in Outlander.

We returned to Inverness and parked downtown and wandered around for a little while.  Our goal was to be at Hootananny, the best Scottish music venue in Scotland, when they opened at 4:00 pm for a late lunch.  We had stopped by Hoots, as the locals call it, the day before to try to make a dinner reservation for Saturday.  They were not taking reservations on Saturday as it was going to be a very busy day.  Scotland was playing their first World Cup game since 1998 and the whole country was pretty excited about it.  The game would start at 2:00 a.m. local time and Hoots was having a watch party.  They had live music lined up from 4:30 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. and multiple people had told us it would be packed, so we had decided to go early, enjoy a late lunch and some music before it got too packed.   It worked out well.  We were the only ones waiting when they opened the door. 

We had a great chat with one of the owners who was pretty happy to hear that his establishment had been recommended to us by friends in CA and was pleased to tell us about modifications they’d made in the last few months.  We ordered food and settled into the best seats in the house where we enjoyed the live music for the next couple of hours.

We didn’t stay up for the Scotland soccer game, but we did watch an earlier game back at the hotel.

Sunday morning we checked out of our hotel and went into Inverness to walk the Ness Islands – a series of small islands in the River Ness which have been connected by foot bridges.  It was a pretty walk.

We also walked through Cavell Gardens, named for a British nurse who was executed by the Germans after she was caught helping soldiers escape from a hospital in Brussels during WWI.  There is also a large memorial to those lost during the war.

As we returned to our car on the other side of the river we passed this small shed belonging to the Inverness Angling Club, founded in 1917.  In front of it was this statue; the plaque reads “BREAC, speckled trout”.

We were all a bit confused – that sure looks like a dog, not a fish!

On our way from Inverness to the location of our yoga retreat we took a detour around Black Isle, which is not an island, but a peninsula, upon the recommendation of the woman working the hotel desk the previous evening who had come over to chat with us during the soccer game.  Our first destination was Chanonry Point, one of the best places in the world to watch bottlenose dolphins from the shore.  There are about 200 dolphins in this area, the only population living in the North Sea.  They are the biggest bottlenose dolphins in the world because they have adapted to living in the cold waters with layers of fat keeping them warm. Beyond the dolphins, on the point of land on the other side of the water near the end of the video is Fort George, where we were the previous day.

As we walked along the shore, we also saw a number of jellyfish.

We then drove a few miles to enjoy a short hike to a waterfall.

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