Loch Ness Cruise, More Fort Augustus, the Falls of Foyers
I left you hanging at the end of this morning’s post, promising there’d be more from Fort Augustus Scotland after I had lunch. I did not lie.
You might have guessed what it was when I said a river and a canal flow through Fort Augustus and the village is close to Loch Ness. Yes, indeed. It was a cruise on Loch Ness.
After the cruise, we had more time to wander around Fort Augustus before, Will, the guide/driver drove us on to explore more of the Scottish Highlands.
Loch Ness Cruise

The cruise lasted a little over 45 minutes.
The boat had two decks. The lower one was fully enclosed and had a bar. The upper one had a clear plastic ceiling and open sides. I sat upstairs in a seat on the side of the boat. That proved to be a somewhat wet experience.
The sun shone brightly when the boat pulled away from the dock. About ten minutes later, dark clouds formed out of nowhere and it started to rain fairly heavily. The wind was such that people on my side of the boat got wet despite the roof. I was wearing my trusty raincoat and stood my ground or, rather, sat in my seat.
Ten or fifteen minutes later, the sun came out again. At around the turning point of the cruise, the dark clouds moved in again. But before we got to the dock, it was sunny again.
I think that changeable is the watchword for the weather here. I know I don’t have a large sample size to validate that observation. But I’ll present some more evidence at the end of this post.
A Big Lake
There was a live commentary during the whole cruise which, among other information, gave the dimensions of the lock. It’s very large.
I didn’t write them down, so I obviously didn’t remember them. The following alleged facts come from Wikipedia. It is 36.2 kilometres (22.5 miles) long and 2.7 kilometres (1.7 miles) wide.
Loch Ness has an average depth of 132 metres (433 feet) and a maximum depth of 226.96 metres (744.6 feet).
The commentator named some of the world’s landmarks that could be completely submerged in the loch. The two I remember are the Eiffel Tower and the Golden Gate Bridge, but he mentioned more. The speaker didn’t say why anyone would want to submerge the Eiffel Tower or the Golden Gate Bridge in Loch Ness or how they would go about it. Even incredibly weird people can be exceptionally resourceful, I guess.
You likely guessed that, because the cruise wasn’t much more than 45 minutes in total, it didn’t traverse the whole length of the loch. That’s probably not a huge loss. The scenery was quite similar along the part we cruised on.

The loch water is fungible. One drop is pretty much like another.
Some of the mountains on either side of Loch Ness are a wee bit taller than others; some are a wee bit differently shaped; and some are a wee bit greener. But they are minor variations on a theme.
Based on the drive around Loch Ness on the rest of the tour, I think that sameness is true for most of Loch Ness, with one exception. That exception is Urquhart Castle (grrrr) on the shore of Loch Ness. It’s probably an attractive sight to see from the water. The cruise didn’t make it that far.
(*For a justification of that “grrrr” please see my post on this morning’s portion of this Highlands and Loch Ness tour.)
Don’t get me wrong. Loch Ness is serene, scenic and well worth a visit. But I suspect that if you’ve seen 45 minutes of Loch Ness, you’ve effectively seen it all.
Loch Ness Commentary
The commentator also talked about the creation of Loch Ness.
Long ago, even before I was born, two tectonic plates crashed together thrusting up the mountains on either side of the loch.
Then, the Ice Age happened, as ice ages sometimes do. That scraped down the mountains so they aren’t nearly as high as they used to be. When the Ice Age ended, the receding glaciers helped to create the loch. And, boom, there you have it, Loch Ness.
The speaker also talked a lot about the Loch Ness Monster, Nessie.

The boat is equipped with downward sonar that runs throughout the cruise to look for Nessie. The sonar readings and images are displayed on video screens around the boat.
At one point, the commentator called our attention to a sonar image that looked like a large eel. He pointed out that the sonar can tell us the dimensions of the creature below the boat and its depth, but not what it is.
He then called up on the screens some screen captures of interesting-looking sonar images taken on previous cruises.
The commentator said there are several theories about what the Nessie sightings could be. Common theories include a large eel or a particularly large sturgeon. And it is known that eels indeed live in the loch. There’s also a theory that a breed of dinosaur that was in the area could have survived the mass extinction event and adapted to living in Loch Ness. But that theory is discounted because,
- If the dinosaurs survived this long, they must have been breeding. If they’ve been breeding there must be many of them and there’d be more sightings of anything that big.
- There is not enough food in the loch to provide adequate nutrition for dinosaurs. And, lastly,
- Dinosaurs? Really?

That having been said, scientists have taken DNA samples from the water of Loch Ness and they have found DNA from 140 different unknown creatures. So, who knows?
After leaving Loch Ness, we had about a half hour to take in more of the charm of Fort Augustus and its river and canal. I spent that time looking again at the small village, walking along one side of a few of the adjacent locks on the canal and back down the other side, and taking another gander at the river.
A Wee Loch

Will then drove us around to see more of the Scottish Highlands, including at a couple of unadvertised stops.
The first was a brief stop just to look at and take photographs of an incredibly beautiful wee loch up high in the Highlands. It was surrounded by trees, other greenery and what looked like hills, but we had already driven up to a fair altitude, so they were probably the tops of mountains.

A Moutain Top
The next stop was at a small parking area at what was about the apex of that road. From there, we had half an hour to walk up a reasonably gentle path the rest of the way up to the summit of the mountain. That vantage point provided sweeping vistas of a couple of small lochs and purple-brown heather and greenery covering the surrounding mountains and valleys.
It was awe-inspiring. My awe was inspired.

The Falls of Foyers
The next stop, this one was one of the ones promoted in the tour itinerary, was at the Falls of Foyers. Foyers is a village or possibly a hamlet.

Will pronounced “Foyers” the way an American would pronounce the multiple of the word for an entrance hallway, not the way a Canadian, French person, or people from I don’t know how many other countries would pronounce the same word. That is, he pronounced it “foy-ers,” not “foy-eh.”
Before we got to the Falls of Foyers, Will warned us that the falls might be turned off. The river that creates the falls powers a hydroelectric generator. Sometimes, without notice, they divert all of the water through the generator, leaving only a trickle over the falls.
The stop involved walking down a staired path to the viewing point. When I got there, the falls were in their full glory. Or, at least, a glory. How would I know if it was in its full glory, never having seen it before? The point is that there was a lot of water roaring over the falls.
Chalk up another beautiful sight for the day.
Dores Beach

The last stop of the day was another one that wasn’t listed on the itinerary I saw when I booked the tour. It was at Dores Beach. The beach in question is a pebble beach at the end of Loch Ness closest to Inverness.
We had 30 minutes there to walk along the long beach and take in some final vistas of Loch Nest spread out in front of us and the nearby shore. It was peacefully splendid, which made for a good way to end the tour before traversing the short distance back into Inverness.
My one disappointment of the day was that, despite all of the time we spent on or beside Loch Ness, Nessie never once made an appearance.
I have one more day in Inverness and I honestly haven’t decided what I’m going to do here tomorrow. Stay tuned.
Aside
Scotland Weather
Amidst his almost non-stop commentary while driving, Will spent some time talking about the weather in the Scottish Highlands. I don’t remember at what point in the tour he said it other than it was in the afternoon. So I’ve put it here in an aside.
Will said that the dominant characteristic of the weather is its variability. We experienced some of that today, with rapid changes from sun, to cloud, to rain, to sun, to cloud …
But he said that it’s not just distinct, dramatic changes over short periods, but also over short distances. He claimed that he’s been in some glens where he could stand on one side of the glen in his full winter gear and still be cold and standing knee-deep in snow, while a friend could be on the other side of the glen in shorts and a t-shirt and be warm. And he said this can be true even if the glen isn’t particularly wide. It could be narrow enough that could shout to his friend across it and be heard.
That sounds like a wee bit of an exaggeration to me. But my experience here has been of quick, dramatic weather changes. So I think it’s at most a considerable exaggeration, not a blatant lie.
(The weather has been changeable elsewhere in Scotland while I’ve been here, but not to the extreme it’s been in the Highlands. However, I haven’t been in Scotland, and particularly not in the Highlands, long enough to say if that’s the norm or just a fluke during my presence.)
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A boat cruise! Yippee!
I don’t know why I am so incredulous about those lovely Scots and their tales. Strange sonar images that you could ‘see with your own eyes’? Unidentifiable DNA in the lake? One small glen with winter on one side and summer on the other? Hmm. It is seeming to me like the tales are as tall as the Loch Ness is deep. (Are they really concerned that the Eiffel Tower or the Golden Gate Bridge might be down there? Has anyone told them where they have last been spotted?). Makes things more colourful, for sure, but why you would need the embellishments when what you saw is so spectacular is a mystery. Seems like it was a very full and glorious day.
Here is a BBC report about DNA testing in Loch Ness by scientists from a university in New Zealand: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-49495145 They found lots of eel DNA, but no dinosaur or sturgeon DNA. They say they can’t rule out that Nessie is a large eel.
The landmarks in the loch were obviously just so people could visualize the length, width and particularly depth of Loch Ness, not suggesting they’re in there. They didn’t really say they were down there. But if some people think they’ve spotted a large monster in Loch Ness, then I wouldn’t be surprised if some people think they spotted those landmarks down there, probably after several glasses of scotch whisky.
Yeah, I’m very skeptical about the summer and winter simultaneously on either side of a narrow valley. Whisky might have played a role in that too.