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From Aviemore, we went east through Grantown-on-Spey, Glenlivet and
Dufftown. Just north of Dufftown, we visited the Glenfiddich
distillery to see first-hand how whisky is made. It's a long process,
with a lot of the flavor and all of the color coming from the barrels in
which the whisky is aged. In order to be called Scotch Whisky, it
must be aged a minimum of three years and a day. The best stuff,
however, sits in barrels for 12 years or more. We took advantage
of the free samples, of course.
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We continued north and then turned west, traveling along the Moray Firth. We stopped in Brodie to do a little shopping, and again in Inverness just long enough to get some petrol. From there, we went along the south side of the River Ness, reaching Loch Ness around tea time.
Our first view of Loch Ness
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That's me, Adam and Al on the shore. |
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We had enough time before meeting Sarah and Al for dinner to go for a walk. I had seen a footpath with a sign saying the path went to Lower Foyers. We didn't know what that was, so we decided to find out. The path went through the woods. What sounded like the wind got louder as we went along until it was too loud to be the wind. The Lower Foyers turned out to be the bottom section of a series of rapids and waterfalls.
Our first glimpse of the falls |
A hundred yards upstream |
You can't really tell, but there's good reason for that
railing: it's a long way down to those rocks!
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We came up over a rise and there it was - the Upper Foyers. I zoomed up as close as the camera would go but we were about half a mile away from the falls when I took this. You can see a wooden railing about three quarters of the way down the left side of the picture. The railing is on the left side of the river, the trees in the center of the picture are on the right side of the river. It twists through the gorge, which is very deep. |
| And to show you just how deep the gorge is, that's me in the circle. If I'm six feet tall, and you can't see the bottom of the gorge, well, my math isn't that good but trust me, it's deep! |  |
At this point, we found a sign that pointed out a shortcut back to the hotel and it was nearly time for dinner. We took the path back, had dinner and brought Sarah and Al out to the falls.
It was around 10:00 PM and the sun had gone down below the mountains on the other side of the loch. There was still a lot of daylight left but it was too dark to take pictures . We went all the way up to the Upper Foyers and got soaked with mist. It was stunning.
We then walked down to the Lower Foyers and went to the shore of Loch Ness. It was after 11:00 PM and it was only now starting to get dark. We monster-spotted, without success, for as long as we could before heading back to the hotel and a great night's sleep.
Next: June 14, 2000
| Florida to London: Danusia's side trip | ||
| London to Edinburgh: Grey Mare's Tail | ||
| Edinburgh to Luing: Edinburgh Castle, the ferry to Luing | ||
| Luing to Aviemore: Hill climbing, grey weather | ||
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June 13, 2000
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Aviemore to Foyers: Glenfiddich distillery, Loch Ness, Falls of Foyers | |
| Foyers to Glen Sheil: More of Loch Ness and Falls of Foyers, Urquhart Castle, Glen Sheil | ||
| Glen Sheil to Stornoway: Eilean Donan Castle, ferry from Uig to Tarbert | ||
| Stornoway, Luskentyre and Tarbert | ||
| Callanish | ||
| Dail Mor | ||
| Ceilidh on the lawn | ||
| Stornoway to Inverness: A quick good-bye, foggy ferry ride, bus to Inverness | ||
| Inverness to London: Hot Hamlet, Floridians get sunburned |
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Distinguished Women of Past and Present