21/05/08 - From fishing villages to battle grounds.

First job of the day was to check on the foal and mum of course. The
little fella looked alot more stable on its feet, and seemed to have
found mummy's milk as its belly was nice and fill :-). We then filled
our own bellies which was very easily done thanks to Thyna's wonderful
hospitality.
After rounding up all our belongings we had managed to scatter
through-out the house, we said our goodbyes and were on the road again
- heading west towards Inverness.
The journey took us past numerous picturesque old fishing villages,
two of the best had to be Pennan and Portsoy. To get to Pennan we
negotiated a prettys steep hill to get down to the 30 odd houses all
crammed together end on end along the small cove front. We saw
stunning scenery, a hotel, a B&B, a pub for sale and a red phone box
there wasn't any room for much else. The red phone box was apparently
the star of a 1983 movie - Local Hero.

Portsoy is a slightly larger village, but its 2 man-made harbours are
step back in time. The older of the 2 was build in the 1600s - no
concrete here, just rectangle stones stacked vertically on top each
other. The 'new' harbour is still well over 100 years old!!
This was quite enough sleepy fishing villages for two days, we parked
up for a siesta then drove on to Culloden.

We walked around the site of the 'last-ever battle on British soil' -
I guess that is technically correct, although the WWII Battle of
Britain springs to mind. Anyway, the Battle of Culloden occurred in
April 1746 between some Scottish highland clans (the Jacobites) and
the British government. The Jacobites had attempted to march on
London to overthrow the current royal family. They only made it as
far as Derby before beginning their retreat, which ended on Culloden
Moor where the two sides fought one of those ridiculous battles where
they just line up in front of each other and charge straight into the
opposing gunfire. It was quite disturbing to imagine this sort of
battle here as it is a swampy moor. A few thousand men trampling
through would have found it impossible to move about. 1500
Highlanders - who were more used to fighting in the hills, were
basically slaughtered here at Culloden. Only about 300 government men
were killed.
After a quick drive through Inverness, we headed down the less
populated south side of Loch Ness to witness a stunningly calm lake
with the evening sun glistening off it. Haven't seen the famous
monster yet though - maybe tomorrow ;-)