Losing Time in Loch Ness

It has only been a week on the road and already I have lost track of time, forgetting what day it is and how long I’ve been abroad. It seems I have been traveling for weeks now, but the fact that it has only been one week and the fact that my plane ticket home doesn’t leave for another five makes me a bit upset.

I like steadiness and routine. Traveling throws these things out the window, replacing them with irregularity and randomness. I find myself falling asleep in one city and waking up in another, constantly readjusting myself to foreign landscapes. It is the evening of the 22 of April, a Sunday.

I am sitting in an Inverness youth hostel. Along with me are my roommate and an old man who sleeps in his clothes. He seems nice. But you have to wander about someone who is old enough to be my great grandfather, who waddles into a youth hostel sits down on the bed, takes off his shoes and gets under the covers at around 8 o’clock in the evening, only to lay there awkwardly while I read or type away on my laptop.

Of course, anything is better than the roommates I had last night who meandered in, waking me up, at around 4:45 in the morning. If that wasn’t bad enough, one of them began snoring, keeping me awake for another hour. The joys of hostels.

I really shouldn’t complain because I have been blessed so far. I arrived in Inverness on Friday night. After getting directions from an ambulance driver, I made my way down through the quiet streets of the city, down Millburn Road to Victoria Drive where the hostel is located. I was booked for one night and found we had a room all to ourselves. We awoke to find we had another roommate who joined us in the middle of the night, unbeknownst to myself. It’s always a little bit off-putting waking up to find someone sleeping in the same room as you who wasn’t there before you went to sleep.

Saturday found me traveling along Scotland’s most famous loch to the next hostel. It was about one in the afternoon and a cold wind was coming off the lake when I stepped off the bus at the hostel. The sign at the front entry read “Hostel Opens at 5pm. Rooms at 12pppn.”

4 hours! I cannot wait in the cold four hours. I walked around the building, made my way down to the lake to relieve myself in Scotland’s most famous lake, and then went to look for someone to help me. Eventually, I saw a younger woman inside and was able to get her attention.

She opened the front door. “Hi. We don’t actually open till 5.”

“Yeah, I saw the sign. I have reservations for two for the next couple nights.”

“Oh, well we usually don’t open till 5pm, but give me ten minutes and I let you in.”

Twenty-three minutes later she unlocked the door, didn’t open it, and finally motioned for me to enter when she realized that I had no clue what I was supposed to be doing.

Angry and a little confused at what was happening, I decided that there was no way I could stay in this hostel for 3 nights. We were about 20 miles from the nearest town and the only way there was along a narrow stretch of highway with cars whizzing by at all kinds of speeds.

The decision was made to cut losses and get the hostel to transfer our reservations back to the Inverness hostel which was operated by the same company. We did it just in time to make the last bus going back to Inverness and made the 50 minute drive back to where we had just come from.

This morning, Sunday, I had purchased tickets with an agency that gave tours of the loch. I took the tour bus from Inverness along the water to a small dock about 12 miles southwest of Inverness and boarded the Jacobite Spirit, a nice little tour boat taking me to Urquhart Castle.

Loch Ness is breathtaking. The hills on either side of the loch rise up into the misty clouds, as fog gropes its way down the hillsides, encapsulating the lake in mystery. The first thing you notice when looking down into the water is its color. Pitch black. I have never seen water like it in all my life. From the road, it looks like normal fresh lake water, but out on the loch, it is black as night. This is caused by all the peat in the water, which is some form of algae that is abundant in Loch Ness. Besides giving the water a mysterious color, it adds to the sense of intrigue surrounding the lake’s history. Peering down into that water, you can’t help but think that something unknown lives down there, or at least at one time, something mysterious swam the depths of the Loch Ness.

The boat trip lasts for about 45 minutes and leaves you on the shores below Urquhart Castle. The voyage across the lake is spent doing what any person would do given the opportunity to sail Loch Ness, search for her.

The myth of the Loch Ness monster dates back to the times of St. Columbo, a missionary sent from Ireland to bring Christianity to the Picts who inhabited this area. It is recorded that on the banks of the River Ness, a servant of Columbo’s was attacked by a sea monster of some kind. Tradition has it that Columbo made the sign of the cross and told the monster to flee and it left the man alone and that was the last time any kind of attack by a creature in Loch Ness was reported.

The big Nessie boom took place in 1933 when a hotel manager from Dromnadrochit claims she saw the monster in the lake. Her testimony sent hundreds in search of Nessie and still draws thousands of tourists to see if they can catch a glimpse of the monster that roams the lake’s depths.

I for one believe in the Loch Ness Monster. I don’t know if she still commands the depths of the loch, but I think at one time, a creature of some kind made its home in Loch Ness. I came to England already believing in the creature, but something an honest man in Edinburgh told me really got me thinking.

I retell his story.

“I knew a man once, a minister to a church up in the north highlands near Loch Ness. He was a God-fearing man, known for his honesty and uprightness. In his congregation was a deacon who was a shepherd. He too, was a man of God, who one could trust to always tell the truth, a man of his word.

In the deacon’s old age, he came to the minister and retold his experience. He said “One day I was out with the flock and I awoke a monster among the rocks. Along the banks of the loch, I found it, up upon the shore.”

He said he had never told anyone the story because he believed they would think he was crazy and the deacon himself thought he might be going crazy and that’s why he told his story to the minister. He said that he had never told a person yet and would never tell anyone again. Mind you, these are two honest, truthful men. I don’t know what you make of the legend, but you can take my story for what its worth.”

The greater miracle would be that this man who told me this story was not telling the truth. It is more likely that a sea monster exists or existed than for this Scot to be telling me a fib or to have been lied to by someone with whom he was well acquainted.

I visited a Loch Ness Exhibition. Of course, it attempted to demythologize the entire story of the monster and credit it to lies, hoaxes, or tricks of the brain, but I still believe the stories. I suppose it is the stories that contemporary scientists try to shove down our throat, like the idea that amoeba gave rise to dinosaurs and men, or that the continents have shifted many times to get to where they are today (don’t get me wrong, I believe in continental drifts. But probably not to the extent that scientists say it happened nor do I think they are capable of obtaining such detailed information).

But I suppose the number one reason why I believe in Nessie is that I saw something today, something which changed my life and my view of the world. Below you will see some pictures of my adventure today; the last one is a special one. The lake was fairly choppy and because of the winds I was unable to get a still photograph. Off by the shoreline I caught a glimpse of something. I don’t want to claim it’s her, but all I have to offer is my evidence, believe it or not. It really doesn’t matter to me if you take my word for it because I know what I saw and I will always have that.