Day 14 – Castles and the Lochs

Urquhart Castle

Stop one today was at Urquhart Castle on Loch Ness. The castle dates back to the 13th century and was destroyed in 1692. In addition to the great view of the lake, what we are going to remember most, however, was how cold and windy it was.

Nessie?

Of course everyone wants to spot the Loch Ness Monster and it hadn’t been seen for eight months until yesterday when a girl spotted it off Urquhart Castle and took the photo shown here. We listened to a guide who also saw it yesterday and he said it was the first time in all the years working there that he had actually seen something that could have been it. He said it stuck 10 feet out of the water and was shaped like a serpent. How much of this is true? Who knows for sure?

Kilmahew Castle (side view)

For lunch we stopped at the Lochleven Seafood Café (on Loch Leven of course) and had a wonderful meal of shellfish, which Scotland is famous for. The oysters were the best in my opinion, but the clams, mussels, and scallops were also very good.  Following lunch, we headed south along Loch Lomond. Loch Lomond is featured in the song "The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond" and is now part of the Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park (our fourth National Park on this trip, if you are counting). Loch Ness and Loch Lomond were both beautiful and it would be hard to pick a favorite. Loch Lomond is the biggest lake in the UK but Loch Ness actually contains more water as it is very deep in parts.

Inside Kilmahew Castle (Steve and John)

Just outside of Glasgow in the small town of Cardross , we stopped to visit Kilmahew castle which is the ancestral castle of our branch of the Napier clan. The lands were granted to the Napiers in 1290. The castle itself was built sometime in the 16th century by the Napier family, who owned it for 18 generations. The castle today is in ruins but actually in a relative decent state. It lies in a woods just off a golf course and we walked through a cow pasture to get to it, then found there was a walking path not much further up the road. In its day it must have had a beautiful view of the River Clyde and the land sloping down to it.

We are spending the night in a second Napier castle, Culcreuch Castle, which is now a bed and breakfast in Fintry, Scotland. In 1632 the Culcreuch Estate was purchased by Robert Napier, second son of Lord Napier of Merchiston, who expanded the castle which was in the Napier family for five generations.