Kango Suz Travels

When I was seven or so, I sent a letter to my aunt in England that said “Dear Aunt Cookie, is the Loch Ness Monster Real?” Recently, she mailed the letter back to me as she thought I would get a kick out of it. I did.
Even though I have long accepted that the Loch Ness monster is a wonderful story and nothing more, my fascination with this long stretch of water in Northern Scotland has continued to be a theme in my life. It wasn’t until more than a decade after my aunt got that letter that I finally made my way to the windy and cold shores of Loch Ness and looked out on the lake for my own chance to glimpse Nessy herself.
Instead of a prehistoric amphibious creature, I found the beautifully restored battlements of the main historical attraction on Loch Ness, Urquhart Castle. This stronghold turn castle houses a wonderful recreation and video presentation of life in medieval Scotland.
Walking outside, the best part of the entire tour was a demonstration of the recreated medieval siege engines that stand in the garden surrounding the castle. These trebuchets and catapults, facing safely away from the restored castle itself, provide excellent demonstrations of the destructive power of the ancient warfare that once raged on these shores.
While Loch Ness did not produce Nessie (of course I didn’t go out on a sonar-equipped boat or to the Nessie museum) I was pleasantly surprised that the time spent there was not simply an indulgence of my 7 year old self, but also my history-phile adult self as well.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, December 9th, 2007 at 11:29 pm and is filed under Scotland, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.