Day 68 Part 1: Loch Garve to Inverness, Inverness-shire
Virtual Walk: Scotland 2021
13th March 2021: 103.76km walked today taking the total to 7034.93/8868km. 18% of 77 entries submitting 576.45km.
Part 1 takes us from Garve through Strathpeffer to Castle Leod and then on to Inverness.
Leaving Loch Garve behind we leave the A835 to walk through the woods to reach Rogie Falls on Black Water. We cross the bridges over the falls to head through Rogie Falls Forest then Torrachilty Forest, following the course of the Black Water a further 3 kilometres towards Contin. It is hard to believe that in the north of this forest area there was once a thriving farming community called Rogie which was cleared in the early 19th century. Remains of the settlement can be found in a forest clearing and more evidence is believed to be under the trees and in the undergrowth.
At Contin we take a detour, turning left at the petrol station through the settlement of Jamestown to reach Strathpeffer. Strathpeffer is a spa town which lies in the Strath Peffer valley, owing its existence to the discovery of sulphurous springs here in the mid-1700s. When doctors learned of the springs’ healing properties the waters increased in popularity, becoming commercially available through a pump room by 1819. The following decades saw Strathpeffer expand into an opulent and very ‘un-Scottish’ looking town, thanks to the Duchess of Sutherland and Countess of Cromartie, who wanted the spa town to resemble those seen in Europe. The Pump Room, hospital, hotel and Pavilion were all constructed in the early 19th century; the hospital burnt down in 1942, but the remaining buildings are still in use today. During World War 1, the large buildings in the town were used by the armed forces and the Pavilion was used as a US Navy hospital. Part of the Pump Room still remains and is now a museum to its past.
As we wander through the main street, we notice that the distinctive Victorian architecture gives the town a unique appearance, which is why it is enjoyed by locals and tourists alike. As we continue up the main street, the Pavilion reopened in 2004 as a multi-use venue, and now community-owned, comes into view. The town has a vibrant music scene, often described as ‘The Highland Village of Music’ and has hosted the likes of Deacon Blue and The Kaiser Chiefs at the Pavilion. The Strathpeffer and District Pipe Band play in the square every Saturday from May to September, having done so for over 30 years. Every January the town also hosts the Strathpuffer, the most extreme of mountain bike races, attracting over 1000 competitors.
Strathpeffer reached its height in popularity before World War 1 partly thanks to the arrival of the railway in 1885. The train no longer passes through here, so the Railway Station has been converted into shops and the Highland Museum of Childhood, which we pass on our right before turning off the road to view The Eagle Stone. It is known as the Eagle Stone as there is carving of an eagle on it but is called ‘Clach an Tiompain’ in Gaelic, which translates to ‘Sounding Stone’. It is a Class 1 Pictish stone carved around 400-500 AD and was moved to this site in 1411 to mark the site of a clan battle. The Brahan Seer predicted that should the stone fall 3 times the valley will flood, and ships will anchor to it. It’s fallen twice so far, so it has been discreetly cemented at its base!
From the stone we leave Strathpeffer, passing its golf course to take a left turn just before the Caberfeidh Shinty Club. The team plays their home games from here; they are in the National Premier League North Divisions 1 and 2 and have won the Camanachd Premier Cup twice. We walk up the tree-lined avenue and Castle Leod comes into view, nestled among tall trees on a mound. Its name in Gaelic is ‘Ceud mile Failte’, but Leod is thought to have come from its Norse heritage, ‘Liotr’, after the Viking that constructed the 11th-century fort on this site after the Picts. The castle is the Seat of the Clan MacKenzie and home to their chief, also known as Caberfeidh and Earl of Cromartie, having been the case for the last 500 years. Caberfeidh is the symbol for Ross-shire and is Gaelic for ‘stag’s antlers’.
The castle was at the epicentre of the politics of its time and was heavily involved with the Jacobite Rising of 1745. The estate was forfeited along with the title after the Jacobite defeat at Culloden, but, after the 3rd Earl’s sons, John and George, raised and served with the Highland Light Infantry in India, John returned to Scotland and repurchased the Cromartie Estate from the Government in 1784.
The castle, although lived in, deteriorated until the mid-1800s when the family completely renovated the building, by which time the title of Earl of Cromartie had also been restored. The family still live here today, the structure remaining for the most part in good condition and unspoilt, with 6-8-foot-thick walls in places and many original fittings. The gardens are listed in the Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes of Scotland for their significance. The author Diana Gabaldon is said to have used Castle Leod as inspiration for Castle Leoch in her Outlander novels; she planted a tree here in the grounds in 2013. We take a tour of the castle interior with the Earl himself, who has lots of wee stories to tell, before heading down the tree-lined avenue once more to retrace our steps back through Strathpeffer and Jamestown onto the A835.
We follow the main road alongside the river, which we cross at Moy Bridge, just after Black Water joins the River Conon. We pass through the tiny villages of Marybank and Urray to arrive in Muir of Ord. Muir of Ord historically was a difficult place to reach. It sat between the Rivers Conon and Beauly, so until access was created by the building of the Lovat Bridge over the River Beauly, and the Conon Bridge over the River Conan, any travel north of Inverness was difficult. Following the completion of this route cattle drovers converged on an area south of Tarradale, where a market grew in the 1820s. Drovers would sell their cattle from the north to traders who would then drive the cattle south to larger markets in Falkirk or Crieff. The area where the market took place became known as Muir of Ord.
In 1862 the Inverness and Ross-shire Railway put a line through Tarradale, calling their station Muir of Ord after the cattle market a mile south. Before long, the name Tarradale was forgotten, the area expanded to fill in the gaps between the market and the town, and the whole area became Muir of Ord. The Black Isle Show was born in 1836, after the formation of The Black Isle Farmers Society that year. Every year since, the Black Isle Show took place in local farmers' fields until they acquired land in 1955, near where the market used to take place in the south of the town, calling it the Mannsfield Showground. The annual Black Isle Show still takes place at the showground on the first Saturday in August every year; it is the biggest agricultural event in the north.
We wander through the town, passing the Glen Ord Distillery, distilling whisky legally since 1835, originally under the name Mill of Ord. This and other industries contributed to the growth of the town in the 19th century. We pass through the various streets and, as we pass the golf course heading south, we reach an industrial estate on the left-hand side at the edge of the town. It is here that Muir of Ord’s story began and where the Mannsfield Showground is based for the annual event.
At the Highland Clearance scrapyard, we turn left and follow the road past Tarradale House. This house is where the noted geologist, Sir Roderick Impey Murchison, was born in 1792. He was a renowned geologist who identified the Silurian system, one of the founders of the Royal Geographical Society, of which he was president for many years. In his later years, he was better known as a geographer than a geologist, a prominent supporter of David Livingstone’s, and others, expeditions. The Murchison Falls on the Nile in Uganda are named after him, as are a number of other geographical features across the world.
We are back in familiar territory passing Tarradale House, having walked through en route from Beauly to the Black Isle before heading north.
We rejoin the A832 for a short time before turning down a minor road which takes us along the Beauly Firth. We pass through Milton with its Killearnan Church, before reaching Redcastle. Red Castle, originally called Edirdovar and Ederdour, is now a ruin but has quite a history. A castle was originally built here by William the Lion in 1179, known as Edirdovar. By 1492 the castle and lands belonged to Clan MacKenzie and remained so until 1790. The current ruin dates from 1641 and was remodelled by subsequent owners. The castle was requisitioned by the army during World War 2 and, after they vacated the castle, it was stripped of its roof in the 1950s. In its heyday, it was an impressive palatial castle but now sits derelict on the at-risk register. There are currently no plans to restore it and the owners are not wanting to sell. It isn't the only derelict historical property in this situation. Many Scottish historical remains are facing the same fate. We follow the trail through Gallow Hill Woods, passing the Red Castle stable block, to rejoin the shore road and follow it into North Kessock.
North Kessock is the first village you pass after you’ve crossed over the Moray Firth from Inverness via the Kessock Bridge. The A9 passes the village rather than going through it, so it's an idyllic spot to wander along its shore near where the Moray and Beauly Firths meet. The name Kessock comes from St Kessog/Kessoc, after a Pictish Saint who was the patron saint of Scotland until the honour was passed to St Andrew, and it's unclear as to why the village was given his name. The area belonged to the Red Castle Estate and was of strategic importance. North Kessock was certainly here in 1437, when a Dominican monastery was granted a charter to run a ferry from South Kessock, near Inverness, as the crossing was on the pilgrim route to the St Duthac Church in Tain. In 1649 Cromwell’s attempt to control the area were thwarted by Royalist Highlanders, who sailed from here on the ferry to take back Inverness Castle. The ferry was an important connection to the north and remained so until the Kessock Bridge was completed in 1982. Its arrival changed the route of the A9 and contributed to the expansion of Inverness, and beyond.
We walk to the end of the shore under the shadow of the bridge, past the octagonal lifeboat station, and follow the path up the hill and round onto the A9 itself. We walk across the bridge, enjoying the views to the east and west, before arriving down at the busy Kessock interchange next to the Caledonian Thistle Football Club; we are now in Inverness.
Inverness, ‘Inbhir Nis’ in Gaelic meaning ‘mouth of the Ness’, is also known to the locals as Inversnecky or The Sneck and lies at the northern extremity of the Great Glen where the River Ness flows into the Moray Firth. As it is on a fault line minor earthquakes do occur; the most significant one was in 1816 at 5.1 on the Richter Scale. Inverness' position gave it strategic importance, so it saw a number of conflicts and battles over the centuries. The two most important being the Blarnam Feinne Battle, in the 11th century against Norway on the nearby Aird (towards Beauly), and the Battle of Culloden, on Culloden Moor in 1746. As mentioned on our first visit, there was a Pict settlement at Craig Phadrig in 569 AD, which St Columba visited, to convert Pict King Brude to Christianity, and established a church on St Michael’s Mound. More will be explained as we visit these various sites.
Inverness is the UK's most northerly city, having received city status in 2000, and it was the fastest-growing city in Europe at that time. Inverness has a port and marina, based at the mouth of the River Ness, and the main industries here today are tourism and food and drink, with growth into newer sectors including life sciences and renewable energy. The city is the administrative centre for Highland Council, who are responsible for the largest geographic area in Scotland, as well as home to NatureScot’s Head Office (formerly Scottish Natural Heritage). The new University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) Campus, located near the A9 in the south of the city, opened in 2015and is where the headquarters for the UHI and Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) are based. There is an airport for the city, located 13 kilometres east of town at Dalcross, which provides connection flights across the UK, as well as a few international package flights and a regular service link to Schipol Airport in Amsterdam.
We turn right at the Kessock interchange to head along Longman Road which leads into the city centre. Bairds Malt has a malting facility here, supplying malt to the surrounding distilleries, which we smell as we walk through to join a walkway onto Railway Terrace. We pass through the Bus Station, where the library is also located in a grand old Corinthian-pillared building squeezed into a corner between less gracious buildings. Arriving on Academy Street, one of Inverness centre’s main streets, we cross the road bearing left to walk through the Victoria Market Arcade opposite the Inverness Railway Station.
The Victorian Market opened in 1870, after the growth of the town saw a need for a ‘covered market’, which many other centres were adopting in Victorian Britain. There were regular markets and fairs in the town which needed a designated area for business away from the interruption of increasing traffic and noise. It was built at the heart of the Old Town with entrances, after a fire saw it rebuilt in 1889, onto Union Street, Church Street, Queensgate and Academy Street, the latter of which is from where we enter. Little shops line the thoroughfare, all covered by a glass roof, which we enjoy perusing as we walk straight through and out onto Church Street.
We bear right here before turning left into Fraser Street leading onto the riverfront. On the corner here is one of Inverness’ popular restaurants, The Mustard Seed, which opened in 1995 and is located within an old Georgian church building. We pop in for a lunch special and enjoy the ambience within.
After lunch, we move on along Bank Street to cross the Greig Street Bridge, one of the suspension footbridges we talked about on our first walk through Inverness on our way north. This time we get to experience the ‘bounce’ for ourselves, so take our time with the crossing. From the opposite bank, the number of churches along the riverside are noticeable and give the riverside an impressive appearance. From the left, we see the Old High Church on St Michael’s Mount (we’ll visit that in a bit), the Free North Church (1889-92), then the red sandstone St Columba High Church (1851-2), all still active churches today.
From the bridge, we see Balnain House on the right, a merchant’s house built in 1726 which became a field hospital for government troops during the Battle of Culloden. It was saved from demolition in 1968 by the Inverness Civic Trust and has been owned by the National Trust for Scotland since 1996; they have their regional headquarters here. We wander along the riverside, taking in views of the castle located on Castle Hill, and before crossing Ness Bridge, we visit The Highland House of Fraser, home to The Scottish Kiltmaker Exhibition Centre. Here we get an insight into the history, traditions and culture of the kilt, as well as watch its manufacture by skilled craftsmen.
Once across the Ness Bridge, we are on Bridge Street in the shadow of Castle Hill and a modern building complex, not the prettiest on the planet, where the Inverness Museum and Art Gallery (IMAG) is based next to the Tourist Information Office. The Inverness Museum first opened its doors in 1821 as a Highland and Jacobite collection. It moved into this building in 1963, has had a few renovations since that time, and houses Highland history and heritage items along with a number of Jacobite pieces. We venture in for a nosey!
Next to the museum road entrance stands a beautiful building, the Inverness Town House built in 1878-82. The Old Town House, built in 1708 for Lord Lovat which had become the Town House by 1716, was demolished in 1878 to make way for the current building. It has recently undergone exterior restoration so looks as fabulous outside as it does inside. The interior is very grand with an imposing staircase at the entrance leading up to the principal rooms comprising the town hall, Council Chambers and committee room. It was in the Council Chambers that Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, met his Cabinet in 1921 regarding the situation in Ireland whilst holidaying in Gairloch. The Inverness Town Council was based here until the 1960s when it moved out to purpose-built premises on Glenurquhart Road. This building is still used for civic functions, weddings and meetings. The Mercat Cross, dating from 1768 and in good condition, stands in front of the Town House near to the site of its original position called The Exchange. We turn away from the Town House now to walk along Church Street and visit the older part of the city.
Comments
Post a Comment