Inverness and the Highlands.
Now we are not in the far north of Scotland
but about three hours by train north of Edinburgh and Inverness.
Inverness itself is just a small workaday city
but it's nicely situated on the River Ness.
It has a castle which is actually now the courthouse
and that has a viewing platform.
You can see it in the slide, the big building up on the hill there.
They also have a nice local museum
that talks about some of the local history
and everything like that, so that's worth checking out.
Really, Inverness just makes a good home base
for exploring the area so I'm going to talk about some
of the things that you might want to check out
while you're up in that part of Scotland.
Of course, there are lots of opportunities
for taking walks in the woods.
If you're in the city itself you can actually
just walk along the river and there's a beautiful park
that connects some islands across the river
so that's a nice option
or you can head outside of the city
to various places where you can take a walk.
The Cairngorms National Park
is to the south and east of Inverness so it's a great place
if you're a serious hiker or you want
to just find a nice easier walk
but really feel what it's like to be out in the mountains
and out in the countryside in the woods in Scotland.
When you're in the highlands
or when you're anywhere in Scotland
in the summertime there are highland games
happening all over the country
not every single little town
but most towns have their own highland games.
You can just look online or ask around locally
if you already have your trip planned
and you can't make adjustments for it.
Just see if you can find out if there are
any highland games happening in any towns
where you might be while you're there
because they're a lot of fun.
You can see all the heavyweight games things like that
tossing the caber, basically throwing an entire tree trunk
over itself things like that.
Highland dancing it's a lot of fun
and it's a fun activity for an individual
or for a family. Check that out.
Another thing that's a lot of fun
is visiting a sheepdog demonstration.
We do this on our tour of Scotland
on our way north to Inverness.
This one is listed in the guidebook.
It's called Leault Farms.
You can go and have a demonstration
of how these sheepdogs wrangle the sheep
and learn all about the life
from the local shepherd whose name is Neil, he and his dogs.
The dogs are just incredible so it's really fascinating.
He might even drag over a sheep
and let you give it a shot shearing.
Sometimes they have puppies
not all the time but it's pretty special when they do
so you can go visit Neil on the sheepdog farm
and hopefully get to meet some of his newborn puppies.
Another popular site to visit close to Inverness is the Clava Cairns.
If you're interested in neolithic history
or any kind of prehistory
who are the people who erected
standing stones and things like that
this is a really wonderful site to visit.
It's free. It's just out in the open.
What it is is three neolithic burial chambers.
Two of them are passage cairns
or passage graves and there are some standing stones
around the cairns themselves
so that's a great place we visit.
It's also said to be the place that Diana Gabaldon
got her inspiration for the story of Outlander
with the split stone where Clare passes through time
so Outlander fans have to make a visit to the Clava Cairns also.
It's a wonderful sight and we have a picnic there on our tour.
Picnicking is a great way to save a bit of money
and just have a really nice experience.
You can either pick up a quick sandwich
from the grocery store or you can go all out
and get smoked salmon in the lot and have a whole spread
but it's just a really enjoyable thing to do.
Of course, you hope that you get the good weather for it
but even if you don't it can be a lot of fun.
It can be a little adventure.
Another site close to Inverness
that is an absolute must on the trip to Scotland
if you're heading to the Highlands
is the Battlefield of Culloden.
Battlefield of Culloden was where the last pitched battle
on British soil took place.
It is a very important site to Scottish people.
It still has a lot of emotional quality to it. It's very, very important site.
A lot of people had the misconception
that it was actually Scottish army versus English army
but it was really an army of Hanoverian supporters
or the Hanoverian kings of Britain
versus the ousted Stuart kings or the supporters of King James.
Those were known as the Jacobites.
It's the Jacobites versus the Hanoverians
and the Jacobites were absolutely slaughtered.
After that point, because most of the supporters
of the Jacobite cause were highlander's
their traditional ways were banned.
It represents the end of the traditional Highland way of life.
It touches the heart of a lot of Scottish people very deeply.
Outside of the center, you have the memorial.
The protruding bricks represent the fallen soldiers
from each army so you see in the foreground
there are just a handful of Hanoverian.
Then in the background just extending way back
to the battlefield represent
each individual lost life of a Jacobite soldier.
Of course, it's a battlefield
but it has a really wonderful
state-of-the-art visitor center that's high tech.
You can go through
and on one side you have the point of view
of all the events leading up to the battle
and the battle from the Hanoverian side
and on along the other side is the Jacobite point of view.
It's a very interesting experience altogether, very interactive.
You can actually go into a room
and they project onto the walls what happened
in the battle commencing
so you literally are putting yourself
in the middle of this battlefield
as the troops are lining up and start to fight.
It's really a moving experience.
All over Scotland, you find castles and palaces of local aristocracy.
One that is a really fun visit is Cawdor Castle?
It also has some connection to the thanes of Cawdor
again, Shakespeare but that's all kind of tenuous really.
At any rate, Cawdor Castle is still lived
in by the current local aristocrat.
She is the Dowager Countess of Cawdor.
I think it's a lovely visit for a couple of reasons.
One, it's really cool to just see a Scottish castle.
It just looks impressive.
Two, you get to see what it looks like inside.
You get to see it with the furnishings so you can imagine
if I were this woman, this is where I would live
this is what my home would look like
so it's a cool visit in that sense too
and it just has beautiful, beautiful gardens.
Especially in the spring, you can wander the grounds
and it is just a lovely experience.
That being said, there are castles all over Scotland
and manor houses all over Scotland each
with their own unique charm so don't feel tied to this one
in particular. Just look around
do a little bit of research.
Some of them including Cawdor actually
have their own little half-course golf course
so that's a nice experience to have too.
You can play a little game of golf.
Leaving Inverness, heading south and west
you follow what's actually a geological fault line
the Great Glen fault, and it's also the Caledonian Canal.
Essentially, this fault line is full of lakes
and there was a giant engineering project spearheaded
by the famous Scottish architect Thomas Telford
and he basically connected them
all together with miles and miles of canals.
There are 22 locks along the whole of the thing
and it's really just used nowadays
for pleasure boating and like
but it's an absolutely beautiful drive.
If you want, you can stop in the town of Fort Augustus
and visit the Caledonian Canal visitor center
or just watch the locks and have a bit of lunch
but keep an eye out for beautiful places
to pull over and just enjoy being in this part of the country.
This is a Thomas Telford bridge in the town just outside
of the town of Invermoriston along the Caledonian Canal.
One popular spot along the Caledonian Canal
well, the most popular spot, is Loch Ness.
If you want, you can visit some of the Nessy
the Loch Ness Monster sites, and learn about that.
For me, it's just a beautiful place
just beautiful being in the Highlands
and you can visit Urquhart Castle
which is one of Scotland's many castles.
It's mostly a ruin, but it's actually very thoughtfully signposted
so when you walk around you can read about
what used to be in this part of the castle
what was this used for
and some of the local history so it's a nice visit.
You can actually take a small boat cruise down part
of the lock and be dropped off at Urquhart castle
and then cruise back or however you want to do it.
That's an option also.
[laughter]
As I said, if you're interested in Nessy
you can you can seek her out.
She's this person who's just pretending Nessy.
She's actually very friendly.
One of the most famous and
well, deservedly famous sights in the Scottish Highlands is Glen Coe.
Just absolutely stunning mountain scenery.
It has its own history, sad history.
There's a famous massacre
that happened there back in the late 1600.
It's known as the weeping Glen.
People say it's because of this massacre
but I've heard it's actually because of the waterfalls
that crept on the mountains but it's a beautiful, beautiful drive.
Even if you don't have a lot of time
and you're just driving through
pull over and just get out and walk for a few minutes.
If you don't have all day
if you don't have a few days to do a hike
just pull over and get out and walk
and enjoy the fresh Highland air
and take in some of this absolutely stunning scenery.
I really don't think that there's anywhere else
in the world that I've been that quite compares to that beauty.