Day 40: Inverness via Clava Cairns and Culloden

Well here I am at my half way point. I had thought that I would already be half way the west coast by now but I as I am tending to do between 40 and 70 miles a day and take 7 hours to do it perhaps this will turn into around the coast in 180 days.

Today is relatively easy – Inverness via Clava Cairns and Culloden thanks to my Barrel hosts Shanti and Arian.

Interestingly, someone somewhere has tripped a switch because today there are lots of sixteen seater little Hamish and Haggis tour buses about with their kilted drivers and camera toting tourists. I’m not used to it.

They were everywhere I went. But I can well understand it. The Clava Cairns at Balnuaran were definitely a wow factor for me and possibly even more so than Stonehenge. These were a Bronze Age set of complex burial chambers so totally different purposes to Stonehenge perhaps but – for me far more atmospheric.

 

And then to an equally atmospheric experience on Culloden Moor.

The Culloden Experience is what it says in the blurb – an experience. It is run by the National Trust for Scotland. It is a modern visitor centre well set up for the thousands who must visit this site annually. There are actors in costume who talk about life on the moor before after and during the battle and an immersive film using four projectors and re-enactment societies that really do make you feel that you are there. Not a fun thing to do actually.

You can go up on the roof of the centre to oversee the battlefield and I think they have done considerable work to restore the area to the way it would have looked at the time. There is a battle table where the armies advance and retreat in front of you while you are told what happened. Very effective. I would have been the one on the edge running away to hide.

Then best of all, they have audio sets that you take with you onto the battlefield that is triggered as you go around. I think this is one of the best National Trust experiences I have had to date and I highly recommend it.

The cafe serves locally sourced reasonably priced food where I sat eavesdropping on people who were obviously Outlander fans both English and American, earnestly discussing the characters in the series as though they were real historical characters. But to be fair the American author of the books (not called Outlander in the UK) is a historian and she has done her homework and her success is really rubbing off on tourism in Scotland.

Hilariously I even saw an Outlander Cookbook in Waterstones in Inverness. What on earth is in it?Gruel and porritch?

Inverness looked particularly beautiful in the warm sunshine this afternoon. I walked along the river Ness.

Visited St. Andrews Cathedral

and the museum. Like Perth, lots to see in the museum without being overwhelming.

 

I popped into Visit Scotland and asked the representative (on the off chance he would know) what he thought I should have on my must see must do list whilst being in Inverness for 24 hours.

True to form he suggested Cawdor Castle and a visit to Skye. Since when were either of those two destinations within sniffing distance of Inverness high street?

My next airbnb was in a small town called Beauly. I had a small flat there on a sheep farm breeding Texel sheep. No idea yet what a texel sheep is but doubtless I will find out shortly. The best thing is that it has a state of the art washing machine and an equally super duper drier.