Yet more driving today. We didn't go very far, just down past Carlisle a little. We had to stop off in the morning to do some washing, which is why we didn't go all that far. We have 4 days left to reach London :)

We started today with no idea where we were going. Not something I'd like to do very often... We decided to head for Perth, which is just north of Edinburgh, and find an information centre there, which would help us book a B&B (we've had a lot of help from information centres in the past). We arrived in Perth around 2 o'clock, and found the information centre without trouble.

Well... one and half hours later, and they still hadn't found anywhere for us to stay! We were getting pretty sick of waiting, and quite hungry to boot (hadn't had any lunch yet!) so we just said, "we'll come back after lunch" - even though had no intention of doing that!

We had a quick lunch at KFC (it's just as bad here as it is back home), and rang two places out of our little book (in fact, we only rang one place, who gave us the number of the second) and we'd had a place booked. Pfft, who needs information centres?

Apart from all that, it was actually a pretty uneventful day. Lots of driving, and not much else... I got a couple more pictures of the highlands, but they'll have to wait for me to stitch them together before they're any good :)

For a while this morning, we didn't think we were going to get to go on a cruise. They were originally going to go out at 11am, but there wasn't enough people at that time (he said he wouldn't go if there was less than twelve people - which is fair enough, I guess, after all it wouldn't be economical to run the boat at only £9 per person). But we hung around a bit (did some shopping - it's all we seem to be doing!) and at 12 o'clock, there were some more people, so we went out after all. It was quite interesting, though the man said he'd seen Nessie 18 times since running the boat, so I wasn't too sure just how much of what he said I could actually believe :)

That said, I did manage to catch a glimpse of the monster - I even got it on camera! Though as you can see, it's a bit grainy and blurry - I was so amazed (and a little scared) and I couldn't keep the camera still... you know how it is. After all, the first person to catch a glimpse in recent memory was a professional photographer in the 1930's - he was so scared he dropped his camera! So you surely can't blame me if the professionals can't get it right either!

The guy on the boat also told us a story about this lady who drowned in 1929 after their boat exploded. Apparently, she was some rich woman, and when she went down, she had some £30,000 worth of black pearls on. Anyway, they looked and looked, but weren't able to find her. The husband put a reward on the recovery of her body - £30,000 in black pearls! But still nobody was able to find her. So, some 70 years later, our entrepid captain had a look for himself, and using some advanced technology (submersible camera, I believe) he found the body! Not only that, but he told us she was perfectly preserved by the cold water and the depth (some 150 metres or so). Now, he tried getting in contact with their next of kin (apparently, that's the grand kids) but they never got back as to whether they want the body lifted. According to Scottish law, ten years after notifying the next of kin, the body becomes public property, and the pearls she was wearing too. So he says he'll go back in 2009 (he found it in 1999) and recover the pearls - worth some £16 million now!

Now, I may just be a skeptical tourist, but there's just something not quite right about his story. First of all, surely the grand kids know that £30,000 in 1929 would be worth a lot more now (whether it's £16 million or not - surely the pearls would have extra value because of the story attached to them), so why would they not want them back? Second, while the cold and deep water may have been enough to preseve a body, there's plenty of fish and eels in there - why haven't they eaten the body yet? And thirdly, if I'd found £16 million worth of pearls, I wouldn't go around telling some random group of tourists about it (he even mentioned the general area they were found in - it only took him two hours of searching after he'd found that general area before he found the body). I don't think you could trust that a random group of tourists would be as law-abiding as him - maybe one of us would just grab the pearls, dump the body back in and not mention it to anybody (though selling £16 million worth of pearls probably wouldn't go unnoticed...). I guess you just can't really trust everything a guy who claims to have seen Nessie 18 times says.

So, after the cruise, we went for a drive up the loch a bit. We stopped off at Urquhart Castle, which is about half way up the loch. It's quite a spectacular castle, right on the shore of the loch. We arrived there at about 3:30pm, and the guy was just bringing the sign in - even though it said it closed at 4:30, he told us that we only had about half an hour before the castle closed. Oh well, we thought, we won't be back again (not for a while anyway!) so we may as well. So we went down to the castle. It's quite interesting, and they had a little film in the gift shop about the castle's history (like most castles in scotland, it changed hands many times as it was besieged and so forth). Once the film finished, the guy came in and told us, "OK, we're closing now, so if you could all make your way to the stairs..."

It seemed a bit rude, especially since it was only 4:15, but my mum and I made our way to the stairs. As we were going out, these two Japanese girls went up to the lady behind the counter - they wanted to buy something - but they were told "We're closing, that's why I've got all the money out!" which was rather un-called for I'd say. After all, they just wanted to buy something! When we got back out, my grandmother (who had waited for us in the car - too many stairs for her) told us that at least a dozen people had been turned away after we left before they were closing - all this before 4pm, even though it says on the door it closed at 4:30). All in all, I think the people running this castle were a little rude. I mean, it was quite obviously that they wanted to leave by 4:30, not close by 4:30.

Kind of a dissapointing end to a great day. I don't know if maybe it's just my mother and grandmother rubbing off on me though (they always seem to find something to complain about!)

We drove through the Scottish Highlands today, up to Loch Ness and Fort Augustus. The highlands are absolutely amazing! I'm sure there's no place in the world quite like it. You can see the enormous mountains and valleys carved out by glaciers all those millions of years ago. And to imagine the Scots living these thousands of years ago, (hell, even imaging them living there now) is truely amazing.

We made a number of stops so I could take pictures (I was driving today, so I couldn't really takes pictures from a moving car), so I've got plenty of panarama shots to stitch together when I get home! We also stopped off at this little road-side shop were there was a piper playing the bagpipes, in the highlands rain (which it seems to do all the time - it's not really like normal rain, but it's just a fine mist which always seems to be falling). Poor fellow!

It wasn't an exceptionally long drive or anything, and once we arrived in Fort Augustus, my mum and I went for a walk along the Canelonian Canal. This canal with built in 1803-1823, and there are a number of "locks" running up. The water level in each lock is 8 feet higher than the water level in the one before it. They (and the canals between some of the other lochs) were built to create a route for ships between Inverness in the north east, and Atlantic Ocean in the west (so ships didn't have to make the treacherous journey around the north of Scotland).

We managed to catch the end of a lock operation (which apparently takes quite a while). Basically what happens is the boat goes into the first lock, and they close the gates. The sluice opens, which evens out the water level between this lock and the next, then they open the next gate. The boat goes through, and the close the gate behind it. The process continues until they're at the top (or bottom) of the locks. It's actually quite simple when you think about it, there's no need for any water pumps or anything - it all works by gravity, the only moving parts are the hydrolics for the gates and sluices (and when originally made, it would have all been man-powered).

We had dinner at a hotel here, and it was delicious! Our waitresses were a couple of New Zealand girls, so it was good to hear a familiar accent for a change :)

You take the high road, and I'll take the low road
   And I'll be in Scotland before ye!
But me and my true love, will never meet again,
   On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond!

We left a little early today, as we had a fairly long drive up to Loch Lomond. But before we set out, we paid a quick visit to some relatives. These were Ian and Anne and their two boys that we had dinner with the other night (Ian is my mother's cousin).

They live in this enormous three story house, on the other side of the river Cree from Newton Stuart. Apparently, when they bought it some 17 years ago, it was quit run-down and they've been doing it up since. In fact, they told us that when they bought it, it was so run-down that it actually cost them more to buy their son David a house in Edinburgh! Anyway, they've done an amazing job, and it looks like a real mansion.

Their house was built in 1749, as the house for the minister of the church (which you can still see - it's just across the road from their house, and it still gets used, in fact there was a funeral there when we arrived). But for a number of years before they bought it, only the ground floor was being used - the rest had essentially been abandoned.

We only stayed for coffee, and a brief tour of their house, then we were off. My cousins were heading down to the Cotswold, and it was a six hour drive for them. So we left there around 12 o'clock, and said goodbye to our cousins again (it's just me, my mum and grandmother again, now).

We took the western road up to Glasgow, and on the way, there's a piece of road which they call the "Electric Brae". This is a pretty cool effect. Essentially, the mountains on one side and valley on the other are configured in such a way to create a optical illusion that makes it look like you're pointing uphill, when you're actually pointing downhill (and vice versa if you face the other way). So what people do is you stop in the road, put it in neutral, and take you foot off the brake, and it looks as though the car rolls uphill!

It's called the "Electric Bare" because for a long time it was thought to be an electric or possibly magnetic phenomenom. Of course, we know better these days (an electric or magnetic effect strong enough to roll a car uphill would also kill mobile phone reception, wipe the hard disk of your laptop and render a digital camera pretty useless!), but even after you know it's just an optical illusion, I wasn't able to pick it - it still looked like we were rolling uphill!

We stopped for lunch in a little fish and chip shop in Girvan, but I never really thought that much of it. The fish was mostly batter and the chips were clearly frozen chips (not like what I've become used to over here :) )

After lunch, it was a pretty uneventful drive up to Loch Lomond, just on the other side of Glasgow. There was a bit of a mix up with the B&B, and my mum had to sleep in a double bed with my grandmother (hehe) but I had a big double bed all to myself!! Aaah, comfort :p