Epic Fail

We spent this past weekend in Inverness thanks to our Sainsbury's vouchers.  On Saturday morning, we grabbed the 9AM train and were in Inverness by noon.  Upon arrival, we immediately dropped our bags off at our hostel, where we'd be spending Saturday night, and began exploring the area.  Inverness is super cute and, like everywhere else in Scotland that we've visited, we liked it tons more than our own town.  Dundee is a shit hole.

Ness Islands trail

We decided, because of our late start, we would stick around Inverness for the day and explore Loch Ness on Sunday.  We headed west along the River Ness to explore the Ness Islands (lovely), with the intention of walking the first part of the Great Glen Way, a 117km walking trail from Inverness to Fort William.  Unfortunately, due to our late start and stopping for a meal, we didn't quite make it as far as we'd hoped before we had to turn back.

The part of the walk we experienced wasn't terribly exciting though.  There were no amazing views or great scenery.  Apparently, 'the capital of the Highlands' is a misnomer because Inverness isn't in the Highlands.  It's pretty though but that really isn't a replacement for what we had expected.

Great Glen Way

Our first night was spent uneventfully and we awoke on Sunday morning psyched for our day at Loch Ness.  Though we had originally hoped to get to Foyers on the east coast, for their legendary falls, no buses run to Foyers on the weekend, at least not during low season, so we were heading to the west coast of Loch Ness, to Urquhart Castle, as our Plan B.  Unfortunately, when we got to the bus station to buy our tickets, we were told the schedule we were using to plan our whole day was out of date and that there were actually no public buses running to Urquhart Castle, or anywhere along Loch Ness.  There was, however, a private tour company operating an all day tour for £27 per person that we could purchase.  We were screwed.

River Ness

Inverness is cute when just passing through but trying to kill a whole weekend in that small town proved difficult.  Saturday had been fun because we didn't expect to spend any additional time there.  Stranded for another whole day, Inverness quickly loses its charm.  Any shops or restaurants that were going to open on Sunday (not many) weren't opening until noon, leaving us with a few hours to kill before we could get a drink or go shopping.  We were bored out of our minds and it wasn't even 11AM.

We rallied as best we could and decided to take the scenic train route, via Aberdeen, home.  We jumped on the 3:30pm train and were enjoying ourselves until Elgin when we lost our seats to an old man claiming to be disabled (we were sitting in the priority seats).  The train was full and we wound up in the doors for 1.5 hours, without much of a view or comfortable seats.  By the time we were back in normal seats it was dark and the 'scenic' part of our train ride had passed.

I'd been having a pretty tough week, even before this weekend's epic fail, so I was absolutely broken by the time we got home, around 7pm Sunday night.  The whole purpose of spending a weekend in Inverness was to explore Loch Ness and we left without having even seen it, or much else.