Interactive Walking Map Loch Ness & Inverness

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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