We woke up to sun and it stayed sunny for most of the day. A stark contrast from what we’d experienced during our time on the Isle of Skye. The previous night whilst in the pub we’d seen a leaflet on “Jacobite Cruises” of Loch Ness. We knew we wanted to see Loch Ness so it seemed like a good way of getting to see it. Once again I used my phone to book tickets, opting for the “Contemplation” tour which wasn’t too long but saw a reasonable portion of the Loch.

The cruise left from Dochgarroch Lock so we headed to this stop and stood around for some time before realising there was a sign there that said that all tours would be from the Clansmen Lock for the foreseeable future. So we ended up having to rush over to that stop, just to find at the ticket office we did in fact need to be at the other lock and didn’t know what we were talking about. We got back to the other lock with a reasonable amount of time to spare, so needn’t have rushed.

The boat had come from Inverness and once we boarded it at the lock gates it then continued on all the way down to Urquhart Castle before doing a U-turn and heading back to drop us off at the lock and presumably continuing up to Inverness. Along the way we saw fighter jets pass overhead, but didn’t manage to get photographs of them due to not being ready with my camera at the time. I did however manage to get some photographs of Urquhart castle.

After the boat tour we drove back up into Inverness and parked in Tesco’s car park – we did go in and buy sandwiches from there so felt we could spend an extra 20 minutes or so in there whilst we headed over to some other places.

Our first place to visit in Inverness was Saint Andrew’s Cathedral – it wasn’t that impressive but I do like to photograph places of worship when I get chance to. From there we crossed the bridge and headed up to the modern looking castle which is now used as a court building.

It was then my turn for the day to get back behind the wheel and do the long drive from Inverness to Edinburgh. The road seemed to go on forever, but we did have a brief pause in a layby to have sandwiches before continuing on along the never ending road.

Eventually we reached the Forth Bridge, and once over it we drove around for a while to find somewhere to stop and take photographs of it. The viewpoint that was signposted was at a services that was in the process of being built and was currently wasteland.

It then didn’t take too long to get from there back into the outskirts of Edinburgh City. We tried at the “Go Outdoors” store for safari shirts, but despite their website saying that one had stock, they didn’t.

The next stop then turned out to be the wrong guest house, it appears at some point the wrong details had been copied down. Eventually we found the right one opposite the Edinburgh Zoo.

The guest house didn’t have it’s own parking and the owner was miserable. We ended up parking a couple of blocks away on a side street, but then moved the car after eating at the Toby carvery. We’d asked the guest house owner where we could get food, but he was less than helpful then greatly underestimated the distances to the places.