Useful Information

• Places of Interest
• Tourist Information Offices

Local Regions

• Inverness
• Kingussie
• The Cairngorms
• Carrbridge
• Grantown-on-Spey
• Loch Ness
• Culloden and Cawdor
• Nairn
• Fort George
• The Black Isle
• Dingwall and Around
• The Tain Peninsula
• North of Bonar Bridge
• Dornoch

Inverness

The approach to Inverness on the A9 is quite dramatic, coming down a long decline above the town and heading for the Kessock Bridge. To best appreciate it, pull into the Visitor Information Centre on the west side of the dual carriageway where there is an outlook point. Inverness is the social, cultural, transport and administration centre for the Highlands, serving a huge area that includes the Western Islands as well as communities to the north and east. The first written references to the town came in the sixth century with Adamnan's account of the life of St Columba. He describes, therein, the saint's visit to King Brude's fortress on his mission to convert the northern Picts to his religion.

Inver means 'mouth', with the town being established near the mouth of the River Ness where it meets the Beauly Firth. There are lovely views looking from the lower bridges up to the town and its red-sandstone castle perched on the southern banks. The original Inverness Castle was the possible scene of the murder of King Duncan by Macbeth and stood in the Crown area to the east of the present Castle Hill. The present castle, built between 1834 and 1846, contains the offices of local government and law courts. Just below the castle is the Tourist Information Office in Upper Bridge Street, adjacent to the town's museum, which contains various items relating to the town's and Highland history as well as an art gallery.

Most of Inverness's High Street has been pedestrianised so it is easy to amble through an area mostly given over to High Street retail shops. There is little of architectural interest. For indoor-shopping there is the modern Eastgate Centre and various supermarkets if you wish to stock up on reasonably priced groceries before venturing further north or west.

Inverness caters well to the archetypal tourist who wishes to trace and identify with their Scottish ancestors. At the local library in Farraline Park, beside the bus station, there is a genealogist-in-residence through the summer months. He offers an initial, free consultation to those that wish to discover their Highland roots. The Clan Tartan Centre at Holm Mills can also work out which tartan you are entitled to wear and for a small fee include this and your clan history on a certificate. After this you should feel thoroughly Scotified.

Following Church Street, you come to Abertarff House, one of the oldest buildings in Inverness dating from 1592 and containing a wonderful turnpike stairway. It also serves as the Highland regional headquarters for the National Trust for Scotland.

Crossing the river by the Ness Bridge and turning left along the river on Ness Walk, you come to Eden Court, the most northerly theatre in the UK, built in 1976 and named after the Bishop Robert Eden who commissioned the adjacent cathedral a century before. The main hall has 800 seats and the building has a variety of uses as a theatre, conference centre and art gallery. There is a small restaurant. Nearby St Andrew's Cathedral, built in 1866 to 1869, has an elaborate interior with a choir screen and rood cross by Robert Lorimer, well worth seeing. The font is a copy of Thorwalden's Font in Copenhagen Cathedral.

For a pleasant walk you can follow the banks of the river on either side or cross the Georgian bridges to Ness Islands which have been turned into attractive public parks. Also worth seeing is the northern end of Telford's Caledonian Canal. Here the Brahan Seer, a sixteenth or seventeenth century Highland prophet, predicted the coming of the canal, allowing ships to sail across Scotland. 'Strange as it may seem to you this day, a time will come when full-rigged ships will be seen sailing eastward and westward by the back of Tomnahurich near Inverness'. Tomnahurich is the noticeable lump, otherwise know as the 'Fairy Hill' near to the canal. The Brahan Seer touched on many other facets of Highland life that have since come true. 'That the clans will become so effeminate as to flee from their native country before an army of sheep' was another poignant premonition.

A popular excursion from Inverness is down the A82 to Loch Ness as far as Drumnadrochit and Castle Urquart. There is only a small stretch of the man-made canal at this end of the loch where it runs parallel with the River Ness. The Caledonian Canal stretches from the Beauly Firth in the north to Loch Eil in the south linking Loch Lochy, Loch Oich, Loch Ness and the small Loch Dochfour. Less than half of its 60 miles (97km) are man-made. The rest is a massive geological fault called the Great Glen which runs diagonally across Scotland, already half full of water when Thomas Telford commenced the canal in 1803. One of the reasons the government employed Telford to institute his plans was to give employment to the hundreds of Highlanders who had poured into the area following the Highland Clearances. The canal was never the industrial success that was hoped for and has since been used mainly for fishing boats or pleasure craft traversing the Highland interior. But the feat of digging this gigantic trench through some of Scotland's most inhospitable countryside still stands as a monument to the men who made it.