Summer Holiday 2019: Day 5

A Day Out To Fort William

After breakfast we all got in Russ’ bus and headed off to Fort William to go and have a look round.

We all took a stroll up the high street, taking in the sites and looking in the shops, before finding somewhere to have a bite to eat.

Fed and watered we headed back to the camper and drove out to look at Old Inverlochy Castle, a 13th-century castle on the banks of River Lochy. Although now a ruin this was one of the most important castles in Scottish history and has been the backdrop for two major historical events, the first and second battles of Inverlochy, during the Civil Wars of the 1640s.

It didn’t take a great deal of time to look round the ruins so, with a bit of time on our hands, we headed out to look at Neptune’s Staircase in the small village of Banavie, somewhere I’d really wanted to take everyone to see after I walked by the side of the locks on my LEJOG walk.

This amazing feat of engineering raises the canal by 19m (62ft) over a quarter of a mile using eight locks, and takes around 90 minutes for a boat to travel up or down the locks. Built by Thomas Telford between 1803 and 1822, it is the longest staircase lock in Scotland.

Sadly, the weather took a turn for the worst so we didn’t get to spend a lot of time looking at the locks or walking up and down them to see everything. We did however head to the Mooring’s Hotel for some refreshments and to get out of the rain for a bit before heading back to the camper and the drive back to Fort Augustus.

Oh yes, for some stupid reason, some time before we went away on holiday I’d agreed to having my hair dyed – why did I do that? Anyway, that evening Shelli dyed my hair, although it didn’t exactly come out as planned as it was supposed to be purple, but, I ended up with blue hair! Hilarious!

I wonder if this will become a holiday “thing” from now on?

Photos

The Good Camera

Darren’s iPhone

Videos

A time-lapse video of our drive back from Fort William.