Day Sixteen Part Two: Loch Ness and Castle Urquhart

Our first view of Loch Ness

As I said in Day Sixteen Part One, one of the bonuses that balanced our disappointment with the tour guide was that it turns out this was the ONLY tour that drove to the northern side of Loch Ness, and stopped at the ruins of Castle Urquhart, which were absolutely incredible!
One of the most picturesque places we have yet seen. Richard discovered from his mom after we returned to London that one of his ancestors led a seige of this castle in its glory days! No wonder we felt right at home!

A Trebuchet, the large rock-throwing mechanism Richard's ancestor would have used to assault the castle walls!

We had about an hour to bum around in the castle ruins before leaving for a cruise on Loch Ness in search of Nessie.  Richard climbed all over everything and I did my best to keep up.  We got some GREAT pictures, some of which I include here and most of which are in the Special Feature, for all you short-on-time types.

We had such a hard time leaving this fabulous castle that we were the last ones on the boat leaving for our cruise down Loch Ness, and we we were still snapping pictures of the castle from the lake as the boat pulled away.

Once we managed to tear ourselves away from 'our' castle, we focused on the Loch Ness, searching it's depths for the elusive Loch Ness Monster. (You can watch the short video clip below to see if you have any better luck spotting her!)

After our short, monster-less cruise on Loch Ness, we stopped to get some postcards for the folks at home and boarded our tour bus once again for a very long ride home! On the way home we stopped at an overlook that helps give you an idea of the sheer stunning beauty of this country.

Standing commanding the view of this valley is this statue, whose inscription reads. 'In memory of the officers and men of the Commandos who died in the Second World War 1939-1945. This country was their training ground.'

In a spectacularly poignant moment, completely overcome with the beauty of the place, a rainbow appeared behind the statue.

 It's hard to tell from the pictures, but it stretched all the way across the sky.We saw two more spectacular rainbows before our journey was complete, making the intermittent rain we had experienced absolutely and completely 100% worth it!