Inverness; Saturday, 27 March, 2004

Slight rude awakening at 3 in the morning as the train in split into 3 separate trains (mine for Inverness plus one for Fort William and one for Aberdeen) and the jolting of the trains being split and then joined to their engine woke me up, but I soon fell back to sleep.

When I finally woke up properly it was about 6:30 and in the middle of the wilds of the Scottish Highlands. The train was running about 30 minutes late after getting stuck behind a slow moving train during the night but that was OK as I wasn't in a rush and it was very pleasant to lie on a bed looking out of the cabin window over the Highlands.

The train finally pulled into Inverness at about 8:30 so I had plenty of time to drop off my bag at left luggage and then had the whole day to explore. Originally I was going to go to Culloden first off, but as I emerged from the station I noticed the bus to Fort George was parked waiting to go so I decided to visit there first.

Fort George is one of the largest and most spectacular fort built on the UK mainland. The perimeter of the walls is over 1KM and the site still has all its original buildings. There are lots of museums to explore and several small exhibitions on the use of the fort over its life. However as the fort is still used as barracks for the army there are some areas that are off limits.

After leaving the fort I managed to get a bus straight away (fortunate as they are only every 90 minutes) and went back into Inverness.

From there I picked up another bus out to Culloden and the battlefield. Culloden is he place where the Jacobite revolts of the 18th century finally died, and the site of the last battle to be fought on British Soil (though the Channel Islanders may have something to say about that and World War II) On this site almost all of the 5000 strong Jacobite army died along with about 500 Government troops. I decided to pay the small charge and look round the visitors centre before going onto the battle field itself.

The whole exhibition has a distinct bias trying to portray the incident as Scots being massacred by the English. If you look deep enough at the exhibition it does admit that there were more Scots on the Government side than on the Jacobite side and that a large number of the Jacobites were French, Irish and even English!

The battlefield itself is very bleak, just a wind-blown moor overlooked by snow-capped mountains and boggy underfoot. Every few yards there are stones with the names of the different clans from who people died in the 45 minute long battle.

After Culloden it was back on the bus and into the city centre a time for a quick wander round the outside of the Castle (it is the sheriff's court so you are not allowed inside) and then a walk along the banks of the river Ness taking in the small and slightly dingy cathedral. I walked down for north bank for about a mile and then walked across the small bridges onto the Ness Islands that sit in the middle of the river and then back onto the South bank and went back into town.

After a quick dinner in town I joined the Inverness Terror Tour for a ghost walk round the city. The tour is well presented but, unfortunately, not very many grizzly and gruesome things have happened in Inverness, so many stories that are familiar from Edinburgh were told with the omission of where they actually took place.