Travel To Inverness Scotland - The Surrounding Countryside
Although not a peninsular city, Inverness is only minimally landlocked. Six canal locks raise barges and cabin cruisers from the linked series of firths which lie on its doorstep and deposit them on the Caledonian Canal, which then conveys them through Loch Ness, Loch Oich, Loch Lochy and the eight locks of Neptune’s Staircase to the west coast seaway of Loch Linnhe. To the north and east there is also water. Firth is the Scottish name for estuary and Inverness has claims on three of them. Travel to Invernest is amazing dreamland…
Travel To Inverness
The largest is the Moray Firth, which is the outcome of two smaller estuaries fed by the River Ness and the River Beauly. All three define the southern littoral of an island which isn’t an island. The Black Isle is properly a peninsula, a peaceful place of rolling farmland, long strands and coastal flats, and antiquarians still argue about how it got its name. Gaelic scholars suggest that Eilean Dubh, which means black island, may be a corruption of Eilean Dubhthaich, or St Duthus Isle, after an eleventh-century Bishop of Ross; others argue more fancifully that its mild climate keeps it clear of snow when the surrounding countryside is white — and it then looks like a black island.
The largest is the Moray Firth, which is the outcome of two smaller estuaries fed by the River Ness and the River Beauly. All three define the southern littoral of an island which isn’t an island. The Black Isle is properly a peninsula, a peaceful place of rolling farmland, long strands and coastal flats, and antiquarians still argue about how it got its name. Gaelic scholars suggest that Eilean Dubh, which means black island, may be a corruption of Eilean Dubhthaich, or St Duthus Isle, after an eleventh-century Bishop of Ross; others argue more fancifully that its mild climate keeps it clear of snow when the surrounding countryside is white — and it then looks like a black island.
Whatever the explanation, it is now easily explored from Inverness via the Kessock Bridge, which spans the narrows between the Beauly and Inverness firths, and its modest towns are places of some charm. Fortrose’s cathedral has the red sandstone ruins of a church founded by David I for the see of Ross, and Rosemarkie directs walkers beyond its golf course to Chanonry Point, with a stirring view across the firth to Fort George.
According to tradition Scotland’s most famous prophet met an ugly death at Chanonry Point. Among other prophecies, the building of the Caledonian Canal was anticipated by the Brahan Seer when he predicted that lull-rigged ships will be seen sailing at the back of Tomnahurich’. But when he incautiously told the Countess of Seaforth that he could see her absent husband in the arms of a French woman she had him burnt in a barrel of tar.
According to tradition Scotland’s most famous prophet met an ugly death at Chanonry Point. Among other prophecies, the building of the Caledonian Canal was anticipated by the Brahan Seer when he predicted that lull-rigged ships will be seen sailing at the back of Tomnahurich’. But when he incautiously told the Countess of Seaforth that he could see her absent husband in the arms of a French woman she had him burnt in a barrel of tar.
From the Black Isle it’s no great step to the former spa town of Strathpeffer, whose sulphur springs have left it endowed with something of the elegance and prosperity it enjoyed in the nineteenth century. Its wide street, grand hotels, gardens and pump room (which opened in 1820 and offered `low-pressure subthermal reclining manipulation douche’) will seem familiar to connoisseurs of spa towns, and its low-key Highland setting has even prompted some imaginative commentators to compare it to an Indian hill station.
