Loch Ness, the Damn Car, and A Soap Opera

I wake up earlier than everyone else at the lodge and shuffle into the shared bathroom. While I'm in there, someone tries the knob twice. After I leave, another person goes in after me and starts to shower. I hear quick footsteps move toward the bathroom door again, and then a Scottish man reacting to the sound of the shower running. "Damn it! Bloody hell!" he exclaims loudly enough for our hostess to hear from downstairs and come up, concerned, offering the use of her own private bathroom.

Taylor and I descend for breakfast but neither of us are able to eat very much. We've been having stomach issues the entire trip, which is honestly par for the course for both of us. It doesn't help that the food here tends to be quite heavy and fatty, and we don't really have the time or luxury to prepare our own food. At breakfast, we chat briefly with a Parisian man who is so enamored with Scotland that he is visiting for the third time.

After breakfast we hit the road for Loch Ness and Urquhart Castle. I know it's a popular tourist destination, so I've booked us among the earliest entries. On the way, I spot my first hairy highland cow and it is enormous! During the drive, our car entertains us once again by alerting us to low tire pressure, so we decide we'll air it up on the way back.

The early entry to Urquhart makes little difference and there is already a long line when we arrive. The ruined castle is small but beautiful, its crumbling walls war-, pillage- and weather-beaten and covered in mosses. The sky is darkly overcast and the wind whips across the twenty-six-mile-long loch, stirring up big waves and adding to its formidable air. We see no mythical monsters, unless you count some of the horrible people we have to navigate around. It takes less time to see the castle than it took to drive there. It's cool, but I can't help but feel a little disappointed for the effort it took to get there and the level of annoyance the crowd created.

Urquhart Castle, a place for fantastic tales

Scavenged for stone by locals

Not to be confused with Loch Loch southeast of here. Whoever named these lakes, well done!

We get back into our finicky car and take it to the nearest petrol station, where we fuel up and fill the tires with air. They lose tire pressure almost immediately and we realize we have a problem. We call the nearest Enterprise rental offices for the umpteenth time to complain about the state of the car and, since they still have no replacements, they advise us to take it to a tire shop to have it looked at. Any repair will be at our own expense, of course. 

We'd rather be driving back to Strathpeffer via the farm with the hairy cow, but instead are driving back to Inverness to have the tires examined. The fellow who receives us at the tire shop is not surprised that we are having trouble with our rental because Enterprise has a bad reputation around these parts. He's able to squeeze us in fairly quickly and discovers we have a nail in our tire, which he fixes for free. Once we're patched up, we decide to just head into downtown Inverness for some more souvenir shopping. We didn't really have much planned today anyway.

It is about lunch time and we're pretty tentative about where to eat given the way our stomachs have been acting. We walk by a busy fish and chips shop and realize this is one UK delicacy we have yet to try. "It smells good," Taylor says as we stand outside the entrance. "It is good," comments a nearby burly Scot with an orange beard. "Sold!" replies Taylor, and we walk in. We both order the fish and chips meal, and immediately realize we should have just shared one. It comes with two enormous filets of breaded, fried haddock, coleslaw drowned in mayonnaise, a pile of French fries, and a small green salad. The man outside was right, it is good, but we're barely able to make a dent.

A gorgeous platter for the hungry

Inverness East Church (Church of Scotland)

After a bit of a walk around and some shopping, we decide to just go back to Strathpeffer and lay low for a while. In the car, we find an extra set of keys in the cupholder and realize that the fellows at the tire shop must have accidentally left another customer's keys in our car. Luckily, or unluckily, our tire pressure looks wonky again, so we head back to the tire shop. The man at reception is relieved to see us and appreciates that we've returned the keys. We tell him about the tire pressure, so he immediately takes our car in to reexamine. Everything is supposedly fine, and he evens out the pressures for us. The car behaves for the most part on the drive home.

Back in Strathpeffer, we charge the car's battery at a charging station in the village and then walk around a bit, wandering onto the properties of a couple of historic hotels and giving them a look over. We realize that we need to plan for dinner because there are only three restaurants and it's hard to get a table at any of them. I make a call to one hotel but they are fully booked. We barely feel like eating anyway, so we settle on just buying some crackers, luncheon meats, and fruit at the convenience store. This turns out to be plenty.

"It's only wafer-thin."

When we return to the lodge, there is a drama unfolding. The couple across the hall from Taylor's room are fighting and the man, an elderly English guy, leaves angrily and goes downstairs. We hear him tell the hostess through tears that he and his girlfriend have had a fight and he's leaving. The girlfriend is incoherently drunk and the hostess attempts to intervene so that the man does not leave her behind. He ends up leaving her anyway, and the hostess, knowing how hard it is to get transportation out here, does her best to make other arrangements for the idiotic woman. She manages to get a relative to agree to come pick her up the next morning. After a while, we hear the woman call her boyfriend and continue fighting with him even as he repeatedly offers to come back and pick her up. Ultimately, he tells her he'll be back to collect her in an hour and a half. He eventually shows up (much to the relief of our hostess), they fight some more, and then go to bed. We are curious to see how this will play out in the morning.