Inverness to Oban

 June 12

We check out of our comfortable rescue hotel and get an "early" start of 9:00.  It is about a 2 1/2 hour driving time to Oban and we plan on it taking us about 6 with stops.  

Our first stop is Urquhart Castle.  Well, there is a quick roadside stop to take a picture of Loch Ness.  The road has been following the coast for quite some time.  The lake is narrow and extremely long!  The river that connects it to Inverness is the Ness River.  Imagine that....

The Urquhart Castle has a long and sordid history.  It is located at about the midpoint of the loch so is strategically well placed to monitor all traffic on the lake.  Seems that the castle changed hands about every 100 years from the 1200's to the 1600's.  It was finally blown up by the English to keep the Jacobites from inhabiting it.  There was supposed to be money coming later to rebuild it, but that never arrived so it remains in ruins.  The weather changed by the minute.  It would be windy, rainy and cold.  Then the sun would come out and we would rejoice thinking that we would have a sunny day after all.  Only to have the clouds come back literally 2 minutes later.  After this happened a few times, we got the hang of the pattern.   

The catapult used to attack the castle

Pretty small area to be held prisoner

It was lunch time by the time we were ready to leave the castle.  We decided to drive on down the road in hopes of a more interesting eatery than the visitor center cafe.  We were glad we did as we came upon the town of Fort Augustus.  The Romans called this area Caladonia.  This is where the Caladonian Canals connect to Loch Ness.  It takes the boats about 6 hours to make it through the 5 locks.  This saves them the several day trip around the Island.  The canal was a financial disaster as commercial boats got bigger just the time the canals were finished and were too big for the canals.  Now it is just used for pleasure boats.  

We enjoy a leisurely lunch, poking around the shops, watch some boats go through the locks and a walk along the canal to Loch Ness.

It does seem that finding our B&B lodging is always a challenge and this was no exception.  We arrive in Oban, find the street.  We're told that the place has a blue door.  Ah!  There's an apartment looking place with a blue door.  It doesn't have 24 on it but it must be it!  Well, it wasn't. But we met a couple of nice men who helped us try to get into the wrong lock box.  No wonder it wouldn't open with our code!  Turns out one of them is a stand-up comedian.  He said we would definitely make it into his next sketch.  When we found the correct one, about a half block down the street, we found that our apartment is on the top floor of a 4 story walk up.  It is delightful once we're up in our bird's nest.

It's cold, rainy and getting late and people aren't real thrilled about doing the stairs another time.  We're close to the Tesco (big chain grocery store.  Melodie and I venture out to buy groceries for dinner and breakfast in the morning.  Oban is known for the fresh seafood so we get scallops and I make a pasta with cream sauce and a salad.  Another bottle of wine and we're all very satisfied.   

I facetime with Nick and he and Andy are just sitting down to dinner.  Really enjoyed "having dinner" with them and catching up a bit. 

I'm sleeping on the couch and I notice that there aren't any blinds on the skylights out here.  Hmmm.  Just getting dark and it's midnight.  Good thing that I can sleep anytime, anywhere.