Inverness

We had 2 nights in Inverness to rest up before heading to Skye to start work, so we decided not to do too much sightseeing and just take it easy. We stayed in a hostel that turned out to be right on a main street of the place, which luckily wasn’t too noisy. We spent most of our time perusing stores selling woven products like kilts and scarves and stuff, looking for beanies. But they only seem to sell those Scottish-type hats you see around the place with red fake hair attached to the bottom, haha. We did have a walk along the river Ness (Inver = river mouth, Ness = the river Ness, so Inverness means ‘mouth of the river Ness. Incidentally, Invercargill does not mean mouth of the river Cargill, because there isn’t a river Cargill, but Cargill means something else in gaelic which completely escapes me now but I will probably remember later…) We also visited the Inverness Castle which has a good view of the city.

Hamish at the castle looking over Inverness. I really like the way the Scots pronounce 'Inverness', but I can't think of a way to describe it. Anyways they tend to put a different intonation on their words which I think is what makes it hard to understand them sometimes.

Inverness Castle with statue of Flora MacDonald. The story goes that she sheltered Bonnie Prince Charlie and helped him escape from the Isle of Skye disguised as a woman.

Mish on the walls of the Inverness Castle

Then, once we were packed and ready to go, we decided to go out for dinner and celebrate our last night of travels with some proper food, rather than our usual scrape together tuna and tomato buns that we’ve had ‘on the road’. Of course we went to a place that serves haggis. Hamish had a haggis meal with ‘neeps n tatties’ aka mashed potato and mashed yellow turnips, also with black pudding and oatcakes. Good old oatcakes. The haggis was really yum – again tasting like a spicy sausage stuffing (see post on day 4 of our tour for the first haggis experience). I had a ‘steak pie’ which turned out to be a delicious stew on a plate, with a piece of pastry on top. Lol. Dessert was the best though, the best sticky toffee pudding I had ever imagined. Yum!!! It all worked out really cheap too so that was a bonus!

Hamish and his Haggis

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