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2010-03-12T14:43:00.001Z

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450,000 trees set to be planted in woodland scheme - Herald Scotland | News | Transport & Environment

2010-02-17T12:01:00.000Z

450,000 trees set to be planted in woodland scheme - Herald Scotland News Transport & Environment

Hope this scheme goes ahead we need the forest for many reasons not just for soaking up carbon. Wildlife and ameity woodland is in desperate short supply nationwide, though we in the Highlands do have more woodland and wild areas than most. We have also done our bit for wildlife and environment by planting 20,000 native trees on our own land at Errogie South Loch Ness, have a look at our About Us Page

Check labels for trickery when shopping

2009-12-16T20:40:00.002Z

It is so easy to take things for granted, something a number of shops these days are using to trick us into parting with a bit more of our hard earned cash.
Take yesterday for an example I wanted tipex tape and picked up a twin pack just assuming it is cheaper and of course environmentally friendy, (only one plastic carton instead of two) same packaging for a twin pack as for a single pack, but wait, I happenned to check and incredibly the two single packs are £1 cheaper than the twin pack.
Now I call that deceipt.
Two plastic cartons for the bin and yet they are cheaper!! WHSmith shame on you! a name we all know and love? It is now common practice to do this, and just because we have all been brought up to assume bigger is cheaper they try to cash in on the times our guard is down to trick us out of another few pence.
Next time you are in the supermarket, WH Smiths or any shop in fact you will regularly find twin packs are MORE than single packs.
Is this called marketing? Where will it all end?

My New Website

2009-12-12T15:04:00.000Z

Just thought I should tell you about my new website, Loch Ness Cottages for years I have tinkered with my own self catering cottage website always using it to try out new ideas etc. Time came I just needed it to look a bit more presentable.
You know when there are only 2 barbers in town and one has nice hair and the other has rubbish hair you should choose to go to the one with rubbish hair because you could work out that he had cut the other barbers hair. Perhaps that's not a good analogy but so often people in a trade don't have time to look after their own home, garden, decorating, or as in this case, website. I asked Steven from Redkite to do it while I was away on holiday, well I am so pleased he did it for me without any fuss and you know what's best about this site? it is simple to always know where you are on it. Not so sure about the content though! i am working on it, but I guarantee it is all totally honest!! well see what our visitors have said about us if you doubt me Tripadvisor

Google street view at Loch Ness

2009-09-08T23:52:00.001Z

Google cameras are out and about at Loch Ness, I was walking in Glenliath a very quiet lane on South Loch Ness and quiet here means just a handful of cars a day use the road and guess what comes past? the Google car with the funny tower of cameras atop. Well they really are getting into the nitty gritty now and good for them, I love it.

Trying to find somewhere to eat at Loch Ness

2009-08-28T14:35:00.001Z

When looking for places to eat its just amazing how many places, hotels etc don’t put vital information in a prominent place on their website.

This example of an hotel in Fort Augustus I want to advise clients to go out for a meal I go to the website of a local Fort Augustus hotel to see if their restaurant is open to the public, I checked every page on the site and nowhere even in the restaurant page does it say either if the restaurant is open to the public or even whether it is for residents only.

It is generally the rule in England that hotels are hotels and restaurants are restaurants and only occasionally the twain meet. Hotels in Scotland frequently open to public but as many English people wouldn’t know that so Scottish hotels really need to state their position on whether, public, families, etc are welcome or not as the case may be. Coming from England I would always check if a hotel restaurant was open to public before going there.

So having failed to find out from the site if I could recommend the hotel to my guests I decide to phone up to find out… Amazingly there was no phone number anywhere on the site either! its a shame this nice looking site, obviously fairly new doesn’t give the important information that people visiting it need.

I gave up and looked elsewhere.

Technorati Tags: Hotels,Fort Augustus,Loch Ness,websites,Highland Club Scotland

FW: Highland Club Tennis court

2009-08-06T21:57:00.002Z

I thought as an owner of one of the Old School apartments this might be of interest to our friends and neighbours at the abbey who seem to be getting more and more used to seeing strangers wandering all around the abbey grounds. So thank you Caroline for sending out the circular below to members of Fort Augustus Business Initiative pointing out that the abbey grounds are privately owned and not an extension of the village of Fort Augustus.

From: info@fortaugustus.org
Subject: Fw: Please circulate
Date: Wed, 5 Aug 2009 14:44:40 +0100

----- Original Message -----

From: Caroline

Sent: Tuesday, August 04, 2009 7:15 PM

Subject: Please circulate

Hi,

I have just received a call from the Abbey, who are experiencing irate residents because they notice that non residents are using their tennis court. Apparently, it has been indicated from the Fort Augustus Tennis Club that it is acceptable for the community of Fort Augustus & its visitors to access & use the Abbey Court.

I would like to speak on behalf of the Club & stamp out such notion because although we have had previous authorisation to use the Abbey court, whilst the community one was being resurfaced & upgraded, we have certainly not made it common knowledge that the Abbey court is for use if the Fort Augustus Tennis Club Court is occupied. Why would we offer visitors or the community to use the Abbey court when we have just spent a huge amount of time & effort upgrading the one at Bunoich Brae?

Use the Abbey court at your own risk – we at the Fort Augustus Tennis Court certainly do not condone it!

On the other hand, if anyone is interested in membership of the brand new court – let me know – thanks,

Caroline

Midges and Ticks in Scotland

2009-08-05T12:48:00.001Z

I have always been up front about midges and ticks in Scotland and in particular about midges and ticks around the Loch Ness area of Scotland, as this is where they most likely to affect us personally and our visitors. I have a full page about the little blighters here - Midges and Ticks in Scotland Most people now know there is an Avon product that is now widely used as an effective repellent and is normally only available via mail order through Avon website. But hey, yesterday whilst window shopping in Inverness i saw Avon “Skin so Soft” for sale in a shop. If you forgot to buy midge repellent before leaving home for the Highland capital or if what you have is not working, you can now get this great, word of mouth product in town! the shop called “The Body & Face Place” is selling it and you will find the shop almost opposite the Railway station entrance in Inverness.

By the way this stuff smells really nice so around the Highlands even the biggest butch type guys and their dogs smell sweet you know why!!

Driving on Single Track Roads at Loch Ness

2009-08-02T22:34:00.001Z

Driving on the roads around Loch Ness is always a pleasure, congestion free and lots of interesting stuff to see every time you go out. Even single track roads can be pleasurable!

Single track roads are common in the Highlands and they too are a pleasure to drive on USUALLY. As locals we get used to driving these roads, but they are not a recipe to get anywhere fast as you have sections of narrow road with short wider bits for passing oncoming cars lorries and bikes.

If you are not in a hurry you can always see a passing place in front that you can pull into to allow the oncoming car pass without much delay, and whoever gets to the passing place first either pulls into it or waits for the oncoming car to go into it depending on which side the lay by has been put.

Driving on single track roads demands a little give and take, a lot of courtesy and sometimes a bit of reversing if you by any chance pass the only passing place.

Here’s a tip for visitors unfamiliar with single track roads and it will help to cut down on potential road rage situations. These passing places not only allow one to pass oncoming vehicles but also allow cars behind to get past you! Use your mirrors they are the annoying little protrusions stuck on you front doors, the mirror at eye level in between the driver and from passenger can also be set so that you can see out of your rear window! Use them to see the convoy of vehicles behind you then pull into a passing place to let them get past you It is courteous and you will get smiles and waves from those drivers when you do pull in to let them go, even if you feel they shouldn’t be going faster than you.

Funny somehow so many drivers from out with the area under estimate the fragile nature of our verges and infuriatingly go tearing along totally oblivious to passing places and simply run up the verges to pass without ever having eased off the accelerator. this sometimes results in them ending up in the loch, in the ditch or in the mud. We have pulled many of these rubbish drivers out of the mire back onto the road and you know what, they ALWAYS tell us someone ran them off the road. Good drivers do not get stuck in ditches, good drivers are never fast drivers, fast drivers always have accidents sooner or later.

Here is an incident that happened today truly. Our home is heated by log burners as so many rural properties are. this weekend we were bringing trailer loads of logs form the forest to our home winter wood store it involves bringing the trailer down fairly steep single track road, the beautiful Farigaig pass. We are near the bottom and a car comes towards us straight past a passing place, the road is narrow I stop, he stops, he decides to pull off the road but he cant get far enough off the road for me to safely pass, i keep beckoning for him to reverse back to the passing place, but he looks like he is getting more and more angry because I am refusing to carve up the primrose and bluebell rich verges. He gets out and tells me to reverse 100 yards with a 2 ton trailer when all that is needed is for him to take his little car back a few yards to the passing place he drove past. it would have been courteous for him to just smile and reverse as any local would have done. (it occurred to me later perhaps he didn't have a reverse gear or perhaps he didn't know he had a reverse gear! its funny how all these things come to you later after an incident you think of all the things you might have said) its sad but it seems so many people these days are set on breaking the rules driving like lunatics on our lovely quiet roads and acting in a socially irresponsible manner with a total absence of common courtesy and so often with a mobile phone stuck to their ear.

Please, please do try to help locals help you to have a nice holiday unhurried and relaxed. We are local we don’t want to see dead squirrels, badgers, pine martens and deer carcasses littering our carved up verges, please slow down, after all that is what most visitors say they come here to do.

Loch Ness Camping

2009-08-02T00:43:00.001Z

Everyone’s asking about camping at Loch Ness this year! last year they all wanted hotels this year they all want camp sites.

Some ask for wild camping this is the sort of camping we like, and there are some excellent places for this around our part of lochness, I like to see it but it really makes my blood boil when they leave their rubbish and tissues lying around after they leave!!! Grrr no wonder so many places block off potential camp sites for this very reason, I hate to see piles of rocks in every possible stopping pace and I swear when I see it, but i swear even more when i see piles of rubbish left behind by campers in our beautiful wild places.

DONT DO IT or I won’t support wild camping in my back yard.

Populating the Interactive maps

2009-08-01T21:36:00.004Z

It could turn out to be a labour of love to have 4 maps, one for each area of Loch Ness and then have 8 icons for each means that if I just put one feature on each icon I still need 32 features!
It will build up but it is taking longer than I ever imagined. Still I have managd to take time out to write up some walks during last month, simple walks but some of our favourites which we do from our door when the time is right. Have a look for starters at Rosies Rambles on the area map http://www.visitlochness.com/mapping/index.php?region_id=3 Inverfarigaig it is great, especially pleasing when you can walk out your door to be at the start of the walk.
No sightings of Nessie this week. Strange because she does usually show herself more during the summer months the secret beach is always a favourite haunt. There was an unusually high number of RAF jets going up and down the lock recently though.

Interactive Walking Map Loch Ness & Inverness

2009-05-29T13:31:00.005Z

We - Tourism Site Fix, have been working on a dynamic area map of Loch Ness recently. We had the idea for this having been approached by Destination Loch Ness the main destination management group for Loch Ness and Inverness who wanted a visual way to help visitors in planning a holiday in the Highlands. The area of the map covers all of Loch ness Inverness, Fort Augustus and Beauly but the geographical area it is expanding all the time. You can see the present map here http://www.visitlochness.com/mapping/index.php Having developed it the hard work begins.

The way the maps work is simple, there is a main map and 4 area maps, each area map has a series of icons representing walks, cycle trails, heritage sites, visitor attractions and so on. You click on the area that takes your fancy then on the icon that interests you to see dotted around the map all the walks, or heritage sites, for example. Click on the popup baloon which shows a brief description and thumbnail image of the walk and a window opens with a detailed description of the walk with relevant images which you can either then close or click the Print button for taking with you on your days out.

This is where the hard work begins, it takes many hours to publish a walk but we are determined that all the featured walks around Loch Ness are original and local favourites, and much time is now being dedicated to populating these maps with the best walks, the favourite viewpoints, the hidden Heritage sites and everything else which you wont find in the average Scottish visitor guide or Highland walking websites.
We have to date published a few walks mainly on South Loch Ness area in time for this holiday season but will be working on adding more features of all types to these most useful maps for our visitors. I hope we havent forgotten anything here! let us know if there is something else you would find useful, canoe stops on Loch Ness, or wild country camping sites even.

Breakfast in Jim Jams - never say no!

2009-01-12T12:33:00.006Z

In reply to a recent question as to whether our self catering apartment included breakfast! The answer given was -
" Breakfast is not included but what is included are top quality facilities to create wonderful bespoke breakfast which also includes the privacy to enjoy your creations even in your jim jams if you so desire".
Nice one, she made a booking !

I always cringe when I hear tourism colleagues on the phone to potential customers uttering words like, "sorry we are booked" or "sorry we don't provide", this or that. The cardinal sin is saying, "I don't know". We all need to make strenuous efforts to be more positive by using words like, yes, i can, I will, I do if we want to even get close to treating our customers as well as they do in some other parts of the world.

My little piece of heaven in Scotland in Question

2009-01-01T14:00:00.001Z

Loch Ness Blog: My little piece of Scotland

1st Jan 2009 Happy New Year everyone !

Well we took a well earned trip over to Canada this year (5 weeks) and have been surprised and eye opened at living life as a tourist as opposed to a tourism operator. It worries me a bit how easy it is to think how wonderful your little piece of heaven in Scotland is, until you see how well other places treat their tourist visitors that is!
Shortly after arriving back at Loch Ness in November I had to travel down the fast side of Loch Ness (A82) on business taking with me my trusty Credit Card which accompanied me all over Canada and New Zealand in 07 never giving any thought to carrying cash, what do we need cash for these days??
Well what a pain to find that the restaurant with the great reviews which i had eagerly been looking forward to trying was closed for winter Grrrr if they want a business how can they even consider closing down for winter! This just tells me that they overcharge all summer and then retire for the winter on the ill gotten gains. Restaurant prices in New Zealand are HALF what we have to pay for in Scotland.
Went on to the next establishment in the Nessie capital of Loch Ness only to be told there is a minimum spend of £10 when using a credit card Grrrr !!! I just wanted a sandwich and a coffee. Finally I decide to use the village shop, and guess what? they want to charge me 50 pence fee for buying a pastie and coffee with Old faithful CC.

Come on Loch Ness what are you trying to tell the world? as an accommodation provider I despair of my colleagues in tourism sometimes, but that's another story, well, i have several in mind really but I need to go cool off a while, which doesn't take long at the moment as it has been minus 10c outside recently, but a very reasonable minus 2c today, great for our neighbouring ski resorts at Aviemore and Fort William. Food for thought really when they are both at their busiest time of year, many of our Loch Ness businesses are closed for winter! well done Jacobite for doing something about that by continuing cruises on Loch Ness throughout the year.

Round the world and back in 66 Days

2007-09-13T20:29:00.001Z

Well after a long year and an even longer time since I boarded an aircraft we, Rosemary and I are heading off on the first leg of our holiday. It will be interesting to see how tourism operators around the world treat us. We are constantly pushing quality here in Scotland sometimes successfully sometimes unfortunately not so. I measure quality and service by our own accommodation business at the Highland Club Scotland

We fly out from Heathrow to Los Angeles, then on to San Francisco and take tour of Yosemite National Park. Great idea of that American tour company to pick us up from the hotel! no searching for departure points in a strange city for us.
Well thats the plan, will update after we get back from Yosemite.

01/01/09
I forgot to mention in my excitement that we were going on to Australia and New Zealand for 7 weeks after Frisco! and what a trip it was! I have been so gobsmacked by it all I have only just got around to noticing I hadn't updated this post. WOW doesn't time fly? and now we are planning our 2009 return, taking in Tasmania this time. the New Zealand experience was not to be missed, will tel you about it soooon.

Shame on me I didnt make time to Blog

2007-07-23T10:39:00.000Z

Well I have been so busy I completely didn't make time to put anything in my blog.
working on sites, exciting and very time consuming major new site for Loch Ness.
called Visit Loch Ness it aims to promote the area for tourism, not only that, the group of businesses that have got together to create a destination management group have also put forward a bid to have Loch Ness recognised as a World Heritage Site will fill in details soon, I promise!

New Loch Ness Web Project

2005-09-22T10:10:00.000Z

Excitement is growing here on the banks of Loch Ness as frantically working from home on a new mega site for Loch Ness. Can't say too much at the moment but will keep posting as project progresses. I might have news after next months Loch Ness Partnership meeting!
Following the meeting and several more meetings it was agreed that Tourism Site Fix should create a new website for Loch Ness Destination and this is now up and running. On top of this there is a move to make Loch Ness a World Heritage Site.

We slowly came to terms with the sudden disappearance of our dog Suki who mysteriously vanished into thin air one dark night. Now sorted enough to rescue a cat from the British army, The Kings Troop to be accurate, but its a long story which I can't bother you with now because it, "Tabatha" just loves walking across the keyboard!! what a bundle especially now since I made her a new outdoor superloo. Two barrowfulls of Loch Ness sand from the beach was all it took.
I have to mention the new recycling centre in Inverness, what an excellent idea, with one exception, the aluminium can recycle skip has a hole in it just big enough to put 1 can at a time in it!! imagine we turn up in our best city clothes with 5 dustbin size bags of cans that we have collected from all of our holiday cottages, and the container has NO LID just one tiny hole. How stupid is that!!! some guy or gal got paid probably thousands of pounds to design a skip for recycling that only accept one can at a time. But even more stupidly the wise members of Inverness council buy them on our behalf.

The Inverness Catastrophe

2005-02-23T00:46:00.000Z

A chance meeting on the Highland Chieftain train from London to Inverness led to this article coming to light, never been published until now and it is now showing on www.lochnesswelcome.co.uk and full details and contacts can be seen there.

THE CATASTROPHE THAT WAS THE MAKING OF INVERNESS – THE HUB OF THE HIGHLANDS

Inverness is certainly well situated to be the capital of the Highlands. But have you ever wondered why the city has grown up where it is, at the mouth of the Ness? Why not at Beauly or Dingwall, for example? The answer lies in a remarkable – and scarcely-known - catastrophe which struck this spot 10,000 years ago.

Some while back, it dawned on me that there was something very odd about the geography of Inverness. Here we have a vast extent of flat, easily-developed land on the shores of the Moray Firth, crossed by a big river to make a natural harbour. Yes, it’s a delta, like the Nile or the Mississippi (in miniature !). Deltas need big rivers carrying lots of debris, and sure enough the Ness drains a vast area of the west Highlands. Hang on though, the Ness is also one of the shortest big rivers anywhere – a mere 8 miles long. All the debris carried down from the mountains gets trapped in Loch Ness, which is an immensely deep garbage can.

Come to that, no other Scottish rivers have deltas projecting into the sea, and how many other British cities are built on a delta? That’s right, not one, because sea level has yo-yo’d up and down too much for them to grow. Aberdeen – the Dee and Don just end at the coast; Glasgow and Dundee - lining the shore of estuary or firth. Leith docks stick out, but they are on an artificial ‘delta’ reclaimed from the mudflats of the Forth.

So something very unusual has clearly happened here, but what ever could have turned the River Ness into a raging maelstrom, capable of carrying millions of tons of sand and shingle out into the Firth? The answer, incredibly, lies up a well-hidden side valley 60 miles away – at the other end of the Great Glen. And the story of this catastrophic deluge was pieced together by one of Scotland’s greatest living geographers, Brian Sissons, back in the 1970’s.

Glen Roy is a long, winding side valley near Spean Bridge, notable only for one thing – its Parallel Roads. These are the shorelines of a lake which formed in the last ice age just over 10,000 years ago. Glaciers from the corries of Ben Nevis spread out and blocked the mouth of Glen Roy, whose surrounding hills were too low to have glaciers of their own. There are three Parallel Roads, marking stages in the drainage of the lake as low points around it became free of ice. But even at its lowest, the lake was 6 miles long, and held as much water as one of the bigger hydro dams in the Highlands. Imagine pulling the plug on Loch Mullardoch, or Loch Cluanie.

And that’s what happened near Spean Bridge. The ice dam thawed and weakened until the water was able to escape not round it but beneath it, all in one go – carving gorges down into the Great Glen at Loch Lochy. But the way south to Loch Linnhe was still blocked, so the flood water had to turn north past Fort Augustus into Loch Ness. Now all was calm for a short while, as the loch’s vast capacity buffered the shock influx. But steadily, the water level in Loch Ness began to rise, and something like a tidal wave travelled its length. Going past Urquhart Castle, it would have been imperceptible, just like a tsunami out in the deep ocean – Nessie probably didn’t feel a thing.

At Dores, Loch Ness starts to get shallower – and the tidal wave would have grown bigger and bolder until it overran the loch foot and swept on down the valley of the River Ness. Now this valley was choked with masses of sand and stones left by earlier glaciers, easily picked up by the mega-spate. And the valley narrows between Tomnahurich and the Castle, helping to funnel the great flood and spew its debris well out into the firth. It was all over within a day or so.

Before this catastrophe, the Inner Moray Firth (or much better, on the old maps, the “Inverness Firth”) continued uninterrupted into the Beauly Firth – Academy Street would have been a seafront promenade! Now the firth was almost cut in two, and only the flow of the Beauly River and the tidal currents prevented a land bridge joining North and South Kessock.

So what has all this to do with the growth of Inverness into the Hub of the Highlands? Well, early days, the River Ness was easy to bridge at the neck of its delta, and its mouth offered a sheltered harbour with ideal banks for quaysides – and a short ferry crossing to the Black Isle and further north. Then the railway came, and took full advantage of the ample flat land for goods yards and carriage sidings. And of course Longman Industrial Estate now occupies most of the broad, well-drained gravel spread – where would Inverness be if the hills just fell straight into the sea, as they do on the Black Isle?

Back in the seventies, with the Highlands beginning to revive on the back of oil and aluminium, plans were hatched for a fast road to the north. At first it was to go the long way round by Beauly. Then it was decided to take a short cut via Tore – and build a bridge at Kessock. This would have been ruled out as far too expensive if it had had to span the whole firth, like the Tay Bridge. Luckily the Great Flood delta reaches so far out that the bridge is only a short hop, more like Friarton over the Tay at Perth. Indeed it was the boreholes for the bridge that proved this benign catastrophe had happened.

Geoscientists call this kind of flood a jökulhlaup, which is Icelandic for ‘glacier burst’ – there they happen when a volcano erupts under an icecap! There have been other jökulhlaups in the Highlands, but this is the largest recorded freshwater flood Scotland has ever known. Elsewhere in Britain, the Severn Gorge was cut by a glacial lake overflowing, while exciting evidence is emerging for a flood of world scale in the English Channel, when the Thames-Rhine lake breached the Straits of Dover.

Remarkably, you won’t find anything about the Great Inverness Flood in the City Museum, or the Library, or at the Kessock Visitor Centre which overlooks the delta.

David Jarman studies Scotland’s mountain landscapes, and penned this at his Black Isle base. He has a choice of fascinating slide shows for clubs and groups interested in how our mountains have been shaped.

© David Jarman 2004

Our Edinburgh Visit

2005-01-22T21:42:00.000Z

Well having been working none stop on our latest project, a new website for the South side of Loch Ness. www.lochnesswelcome.co.uk we decided to take a well earned break in the Scottish capital. Believe it or not we have lived at Inverfarigaig a tiny village on the shores of Loch Ness, for 15 years and have in all that time never visited Edinburgh! This time being our first visit thought we would break the mould and leave the car at home, and take the train. Not only that mould, we decided to break another and go B&B. We have self catering cottages at Loch Ness and have always chosen them for our holiday choices, at least if we had taken holidays over the last 15 years we would have chosen self catering, but then again we have been camping in the wilderness a few times during that time.
Anyway,
We took the train the firs train we had been on for 15 years and it looked very familiar, almost like stepping back in time! as for some unknown reason I had it in my mind that trains would have been modernised and comfort levels improved, not so, in fact i do believe the trains of yesteryear were a bit better than the Inverness to Edinburgh, cant call it an express as the 3 hour journey ended up taking 41/2 hours. one thing that had changed though was the prices of the snacks and drinks being sold by the trolley which constantly went up and down the isle.
A cup of tea £1.45 !! must be the most expensive cuppa i have ever had, needless to say i just had the one cup. By the way during our stay in Edinburgh i do believe we found the cheapest POT of tea in Scotland at just 48 pence! and in the most unlikely place, the new Scottish Parliament building, at least they manage to make tea under budget.
Couldn't help thinking as we sat on the train watching the world go by that some of the stations, built by the Victorians mostly, how sad and grimy they looked, you could see in places the paintwork on the ornate iron girders, beneath the pigeon droppings and years of dirt. It was in Perth station that I wondered what first time to Scotland tourists must think when travelling through some of these railway stations having been told of pristine environments clean air and healthy living.
It would just take a coat of paint and a flower basket here and there to transform some of those beautiful old Victorian railway stations, for heavens sake we need to do it now before our tourism industry goes the way of the motorbike, car, steel, shipbuilding etc etc etc, industries.
must go, tell you about our fabulous Edinburgh break next time.

Loch Ness not snowed under yet

2004-11-12T15:10:00.000Z

Friends of ours from the south of England moved into the area last month, and are just amazed at the weather! still working in the garden wearing only tee shirts, (and pants of course)They were expecting to be wearing winter fleeces by now. They bought the house several years ago and we have managed it as a holiday home for them since they bought it. They have now moved into the cottage to live.
The house is a fabulous cottage called Easter Boleskine, high on a hill above Loch Ness and overlooking Boleskine House, former home of the infamous Aleister Crowley, and later, the home of Jimmy Page, guitarist for Led Zeppelin, and now owned by who knows! from Holland, I believe.
Anyway, our friends, like many people south of Watford, believed until now, experiencing it for themselves, that we in the Highlands of Scotland are snowed in from October to April every year and that the only form of transport is by sledge or rescue helicopter.
I suppose in some ways that is not a bad idea to perpetuate, as it is during these winter months that our roadside verges have time to recover from all the tourists so unused to our single track roads. Passing places are inserted every 50 yards or so to permit passing, AND OVERTAKING! nothing worse than to follow a car at 25 MPH for 16 miles unable to pass. Many drivers, (bad ones)unfortunately think the verges are good for passing on but this just results in all our beautiful wild primroses and bluebell filled roadsides deteriorating into a muddy mess by the end of summer.
Our own cottages are, surprise surprise, booked throughout the year. Many of our winter visitors, mainly Scots along with a sprinkling of brave English folk, relish spending time in South Loch Ness during the winter because it is easy to find solitude at low levels, while also being able to go into the hills for skiing and to have fun in the snow. Snow is easier to find at altitude - the higher you look the better your chances of finding it, or avoiding it, whatever your case may be! But here on the shores of Loch Ness it is more or less the same as anywhere south of Watford, except that here, the whole world doesn't descend into chaos whenever an inch of snow falls, and I say that from experience. My partner and I arrived here 15 years ago from Kent, carrying everything we owned in our rucksacks, but that's another story. Sorry have to dash, just noticed a blizzard blowing outside - must get a stock of logs in for the fire!

Our old dog

2004-11-04T21:50:00.000Z

Just had to tell someone: we have (had) a dog, very old, stone deaf and with failing eyesight, her limit for walking is only a half mile or so, (did I hear, "my kinda dog")
We found her two and a half years ago on the side of Loch Ness all alone and miles from anywhere, and no one claimed her, so she made her home with us on the banks of Loch Ness.
She is a happy girl and always loved going for walks, but preferred to go for a drive in the car, (couldn't see the point of walking when you can get a lift!)
She went out two nights ago, as she has done hundreds of times. We live right out in the wilderness so we know she is safe to go out unsupervised, and with failing eyesight, she always stayed in the pools of light given out across the lawns by the house lights. That night she didn't come back inside. We began to look for her 2 minutes after she went out but we can't find her anywhere. She seems to have disappeared into thin air just as she appeared out of thin air when she first found us! but that's another story.

Two days since our Suki left us. We've searched everywhere, several times over, and now the house is empty. I still go out last thing at night, and race to open the door first thing in the morning as I have for the last two and a half years to let her out........... Must try and do some work.

We are just beginning to get used to the idea that she's not comming back almost 3 weeks since we saw her, just so bad not knowing where she went.