July/August 2024


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I stood on the littoral, looking up at the hatching moon, panning my gaze towards Gruinard Bay and the switchback of peaks trailing off to the north, caressed by ocean. A hyphen of light betrayed a transatlantic jet with its dying contrail. I shut my eyes to see it more clearly.


The coastal landscape further east from Inverness


could distilleries, scarce


be more different, reaching towards Speyside,


with its and


undulating hills far more submissive, and differently lovely to those of the west. Next day in brightness,


INVITING INVERNESS | 21


nosed dolphin who come here to play and pose for tourists. Far to the west I spotted rain clouds over Loch Ness, my intended final day’s destination. I shouldn’t have worried. Nessie is waterproof and her agent had booked my swansong with Jacobite Cruises from Inverness to Urquhart


Castle along


with guaranteed oohing and aahing as the tourists who surrounded me waved their cameras at every ripple, push


each I drove


of Ireland’s ‘Wild Atlantic Way’. This westward trail boasted pristine beaches, lofty mountains, one of the world’s most stunning gardens, joined by a necklace of pretty villages gracing the finest northern outlook on Scotland’s west coast. As occurs in Ireland, rain and mist sometimes kill the scenery here; but my luck held.


Gairloch’s golden curve of sand with its Gulf Stream current lured me to swim before I picnicked. The village museum


was small and welcoming. Further on, I reached Inverewe, with its gardens run by the National Trust. You could spend a whole day among the scented colourful canvas of worldwide species. Someone mentioned Gruinard Island,


where


wartime anthrax testing still haunted local memory. Someone else spoke of Mellon Udrigle, north of Laide where the sand reputedly is empty, almost ivory coloured, pristine beneath the sky which, on summer nights does not grow dark.


north to Tain and took a tour of renowned Glenmorangie distillery, where the famous single malt is prone to linger on the tongue. At Tain’s Platform restaurant I lunched on exceptional fish and chips, then stopping briefly at Anta Pottery, bought half a dozen pricy mugs—a gift for myself—and headed to Nigg on Cromarty Firth. Nigg became famous during the heyday of North Sea oil. Now the construction yard faced the partly abandoned skeletons


of late rigs either


decommissioned or waiting in hope of belated rebirth, sitting forlornly in placid waters, near Invergordon. Running


for my return to


Inverness, I took the Nigg ferry to the pretty village of Cromarty, where the buildings display attractive old Flemish gables, tea shops and restaurants, all set on a foreshore famous for fossils and not infrequent displays by pods of bottle-


keen to other


aside to capture the money shot. Gert from Hamburg stared at the lochside’s


steepness.


pillowy “Just


like Bavaria,” he said, “But even more beautiful and colder.” I’ll go there next


time, I told him. “We haven’t got the monster,” he said, “but maybe I capture Nessie.” Just then a tree stump or something like it bobbed in the distance. A hundred lenses rose as one.


Getting There: Stena Line from Belfast (www.stenaline.co.uk), or Dublin, (www.stenaline.ie ) Staying: Park Guest House,


parkguesthouseinverness.co.uk ) Cruise: Jacobite Loch Ness Cruises (www.jacobite.co.uk ) Check out: Tourist Information shop at 36 High Street, Inverness, or email inverness@visitscotland. com or telephone 01463 252401


Inverness: (www.


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