We had booked our places on the Loch Ness cruise and the girls were very excited. How cool would it be to witness a monster like head rise from the water... to hear the roar from some prehistoric surviving something-or-other as it opened its wide mouth, bared its fangs and then plumbed back into the depths of the murky loch...
Yeah, in our dreams.
We pitched up at Nessie Land (I kid you not) to pick up the minibus that took us to the launch and then we boarded "The Nessie Hunter" (still not kidding) full of anticipation. George Edwards was our skipper and bearing in mind he'd just claimed to have undeniable photographic proof of Nessie's existence (available for sale as a postcard for 50p from George himself) I expected a trip full of romance and mystery, enthusiasm and gusto, especially as the trip was advertised as having sonar radar equipment, GPS and tracking software.
We started out towards the beautiful ruins of Urquhart Castle and Mr Edwards gave us his 20 minute commentary during which we were requested to listen as it was a live speech, not a recording and only once he had finished could we ask questions.
His accent was pure Highlands Scottish and it sounded sometimes as though he was doing an impression of Sean Connery ("Let'sh climb aboard the Neshie Hunterr").
He is clearly very knowledgable about the loch and provided some quite interesting facts, such as -
1) It is the largest loch or lake in the UK, holding more water than every lake in England and Wales put together,
2) If emptied of water and filled with humans, it could hold the entire population of the world three times over with room to spare, and
3) The first recorded sighting of something was in 565 A.D. by Saint Columba, and since the mid 1800's there have been around 1000 recorded sightings by different individuals and they can't all be lying.
He certainly seemed convinced of the existence of something and probably 3 or 4 somethings. However, the sightings usually occur during the hours of dusk and dawn which almost seemed to make the datytime Nessie hunting trips a bit pointless.
After his commentary he turned on the sonar scanner to illustrate just how deep the loch was in some places and also how steep the shelf was very close to the shore. It is over 800 feet deep at its deepest point (called "Edwards Deep" as he discovered it) and the Transponder was showing a depth of over 170 feet just 30 or 40 feet from the shoreline itself (so don't go paddling!).
The problem with the Loch, as he recounted, was that much of it was rich in minute particles of peat which made visibility underwater limited to just 2 or 3 feet around a camera. Given that the loch was so big, dropping the camera in any particular place would be the equivalent of looking for a needle in a haystack and that exploring the loch was about as exciting as watching paint dry. His words. The underwater camera monitor was on for about a minute just before we came back to the mooring and I just think he could have made so much more of that. It could have been on in 3 or 4 places to create a little tension or mystery. I was sure he would be full of tales so I asked him what his best Nessie story was as he'd been doing this for so long and he just shook his head and miserably replied in his broad accent, "No detailsh."
That was disappointing actually. Surely he could have built up the legend and folklore a bit, if only for the kids.
So we failed to find Nessie but we did then venture to the Loch Ness Monster Exhibition which provided much more insight and mystery behind the whole phenomenon... the kids seemed really interested as well. Many of the famous photographs have been exposed as hoaxes and it was demonstrated how illusion can play such a huge part in people sincerely believing thay have seen something. But without question, there is still a huge mystery surrounding the loch itself.
Tomorrow morning the girls are off horseriding with maybe some archery or abseiling in the afternoon if we can get booked up. Just one day left of our summer Highland adventure before we return to Edinburgh on Saturday.
No comments:
Post a Comment