Places to Visit Near Culross

Days 12 to 14There are two ways to look at my stay in Inverness. One way is to focus on the negativity that permeates this entire town and its people, to the extent that as a solo traveller I began getting worried about my safety even while having a sip of coffee during the day. The other way is to remember that in this same town are people who stood up to those acting weird and helped me out. So, in many ways, Inverness proved to be a metaphor for life in Britain, for tourists, travellers and ‘immigrants’. Now, what remains to be seen is which side will reach the so-called ‘critical mass’ and tip the balance for or against bigotry masquerading as nationalism and paranoia and violent opportunism posing as tribalism and ‘closed border’ policies.

INVERNESSGetting there : There are buses going to Inverness everyday from the main station of Glasgow to InvernessWhere to stay : Inverness Tourist Hostel. Costed roughly £12 per night.Things to do : Inverness is legit the star location of Scotland. Every goddamn story about Scottish highlands to exotic locations, everything is on Inverness. And, yeah you can go monster searching at Lochness. Cool no?

We reach Inverness in Scotland at 6am in the morning and our first priority was to look for a B&B (Bed & Breakfast) as we had decided to stay overnight in Inverness. B&B is basically a house were you get a room to stay overnight with breakfast. The charges may range between 30-50 Pounds depending on the facilities available; bargaining is not really a possibility as these places go full round the year. After checking out some 5-6 places we settled for a place very close to the train station as we had a train next day morning at 7.30 am to Glasgow. The place we stayed was owned by a lady, who had a huge dog;). She offered us a nice cozy room for 50 pounds a night. The overnight train journey was very relaxing and we had a good sleep to, so we were all fresh and ready for our day ahead in Inverness. The lady of the house offered us our morning breakfast; we had a nice hot water bath and were out to explore the city by 9 am.Inverness is a city in northern Scotland and it's the northern most city in United Kingdom. It was a beautiful day and again we decided to walk around the city instead of taking the bus tour. Our first stop was a castle just 5 mins away from our B&B, it was a short uphill climb to the castle and we could see the cityscape from here. After a small photo shoot around the castle, we walked to the main Inverness city. The city is very well planned around the river Lochness. We walk around the main city market, doing a lot of window shopping and a little bit of grocery shopping i.e. for water, beer, chips & chocolates.

Bref notre nouvelle voiture nous attends à Iverness donc on trace là bas doucement... comme d'hab histoire de profiter des highlands et des paysages. On récupère notre voiture on mange on visite un peu et hop go to ullapool

A water-colour painting coming alive!

Ahh the drive to Inverness from Edinburgh to meet dear Nessie - again, Scotland is best enjoyed on the roads! Inverness is a beautiful tiny town attracting tourists for being home to many Lochs (or Lakes) around the highlands including the famed and mysterious Loch Ness Monster. Day One there we went up to Urquhart Castle (or rather the ruins of ti) set on the banks of Loch Ness. Lounged around the sprawling lawns in front of the castle after a quick tour of the ruins. While the ruins itself wouldn't take you more than 45-60 mins to cover, we ended up spending over two hours there simply because every point of the Castle offered a breathtaking view. Day Two we drove further high up to Isle of Skyye - there are multiple viewpoints / tourist spots ther. We had shortlisted Neist Point and Fairy Pools. We did a mini trek up to the Fairy Pools, and there are no words to describe how that experience was. I think it remains my favorite place in Scotland. But because the weather was still quite wet, and it took us much longer in the drive - we had to skip Neist Point altogether. Day Three was of course a tour of the distilleries - we picked Glenfiddich and Benromach. First a well known fairly organized and commercial tour, while the latter being a much smaller (smallest distillery in Speyside region they say) more intimate tour. Both tours were quite fulfilling with animated guides and some great tasting tips.

This was a good place to explore the town and the general atmosphere . I bought some stuff here and it was also a stopover in the journey for changing trains. A walk through the streets, a visit to the castle and a bit of peeping into the daily life of the place and some memories to cherish for future. It was a fun experience and little things combined which stay etched in memory for a long time. Author Avarim