Photos
Today dawned gray, windy and cold. Our window was all fogged up and we couldn’t even see out. But, it wasn’t raining and that was the good news. Clay got up around 6am and went for a walk. Breakfast was 7:30am-9am. Sailaway from Corpach was 9am. Clay had Loch Fyne kippers and eggs with hash browns and toast. I had a ham and cheese omelet with toast and jam.
Today dawned gray, windy and cold. Our window was all fogged up and we couldn’t even see out. But, it wasn’t raining and that was the good news. Clay got up around 6am and went for a walk. Breakfast was 7:30am-9am. Sailaway from Corpach was 9am. Clay had Loch Fyne kippers and eggs with hash browns and toast. I had a ham and cheese omelet with toast and jam.
We were getting up from the table to go out for a quick walk
around the Corpach Sea Lock when Brian came on the intercom and announced we
were leaving at 8:30am instead. That didn’t seem right because a lot of people
were marked off the boat on the board and they wouldn’t know we were leaving
early now. We stayed onboard because of the announcement of early departure and
then we didn’t sail until after 9am anyway. I assume it was because we had to
wait for everyone to get back onboard at the originally scheduled time. That
was annoying. I mean WTH?
So, we are in the Caledonian Canal. We entered last night
through 1 lock and docked just inside. This morning we passed through a pair of
locks and sailed a very short distance to Neptune’s Staircase. This is a series
of 8 locks in a row, like a row of stair steps. It is beneath Ben Nevis, the
highest mountain in Britain. This canal was engineered by Thomas Telford. It
was built between 1803 and 1822. It’s built in a geological fault called the Great Glen. There are 4 lochs linked by the canal. They are Loch Lochy, Oich,
Ness and Dochfour. I don’t know why they don’t count Loch Linnhe which is where
we entered.
When we reached the top of Neptune’s Staircase, on the right
was a dock with a team with a robotic submersible camera. We tied up there and
they examined the back starboard corner of Lord of the Glens. Not sure what
that was about, but it allowed us about 45 minutes ashore to walk back down to
the bottom of Neptune’s Staircase and back up again. It took 2 hours for the
boat to climb up, but we could walk round trip in a half hour! It started
raining again as we walked and it is now gray and socked in with clouds again.
Brian announced and led the walk and told us quite a bit. We walked past the
house Thomas Telford lived in during the construction. He told us the
Caledonian Canal is a gravity fed system with no shortage of water supply from
the rain into the lochs. I asked what it costs to use the locks and canals and I
think I remember him saying that Magna Carta pays about £4000 per
year for Lord of the Glens' usage. That seems reasonable for all the times they are back and forth every 4
to 7 days or so in spring through fall. You can walk the Great Glen Way between
Fort William and Inverness for 79 miles. You can bike it. You can canoe or kayak it, but paddlers aren’t allowed in the locks. They have to portage. Brian
really does work hard and seems on all the time. When he isn’t with us, he is
on the phone. We sailed a serpentine man-made canal all morning.
At 12:30pm it was lunch time. Clay had chicken Caesar salad.
I had tatties and mince. (Translation: potatoes and ground beef. Don’t ask!)
The other option was blue cheese omelet. Gross. But those at our table who had it said they couldn't taste any blue cheese. Soup was mushroom. Pudding was sticky
toffee pudding. Dinner tonight is a choice of venison, scallops or goat cheese
and onion chutney tartlet. Clay chose venison since it was the most popular and
I chose the tartlet. We’ll see.
Shortly after lunch we passed the Moy Swing Bridge which is
manually operated and is the only original 140 year old bridge on the canal. We
entered Gairlochy Lock into Loch Lochy next. Our handout for the day says Loch
Lochy is considered the most impressive of the 4 lochs because of the steep
forested sides that rise up from the water, but the whole thing is covered with
a cloud and you can barely see the shore much less the shore sides. Well, the
morning was glorious while it lasted. Hopefully, we’ll build up a few hours every
day until we get nice weather again. (I’ll
just go ahead and kill the suspense, it didn’t happen.)
So, in the cold, cloudy, misty, windy and pouring rain we have passed Laggan Locks and
swing bridge. Laggan Avenue is a narrow 1.5 mile long tree-lined section of
canal. We passed the River Oich pedestrian suspension bridge. Now the walking
trail is only on our port side. Most of what we had noticed to this point was
walking/biking trails on both sides. We started going back down to sea level at
Cullochy Loch, I think. I can’t find it written in any of our daily papers or
fact sheets and there was no announcement when we started down. There may have
been another lock in there that I’ve missed the name of, but Cullochy Loch is
the first one that I am sure was going down instead of up.
It is 5:25pm and we
are nearing the entrance of Kytra Lock. The day’s program mentions the option of
getting off here and walking down to Fort Augustus weather permitting. I guess
weather doesn’t permit and there have been no announcements or stops to let
people go ashore.
It is taking longer
to go down the locks than it did to go up. Someone observed the up locks had 2
workers each and these only have 1 worker so it takes longer to get tied up in
there before they start changing the water level. From the map it appears that
there are at least 4 more locks before Fort Augustus, so since it is 5:30pm
now, we will not be tied up at 5:30pm. This means we are completely missing our
2 hour free time window here before dinner. Oh, well with the heavy rain it is
unlikely many of us would have gone out to sightsee anyway.
It is oppressively hot inside this ship. Our cabin has been
too hot since we arrived and we are thankful that Victor, our steward brought
us an oscillating desk fan that we have pretty much kept on nonstop just to
move the hot air around. Out in our hallway, it is freezing with cold air
blowing out of the ceiling vents. Upstairs in the observation lounge, it is
incredibly hot. All the chairs are filled with (Dare it say it without seeming
mean? Since I am one, I’ll say it, OLD) people slumped over trying to keep
awake. It is actually a little depressing. Clay and I keep going back and forth,
up and down. Usually we have a clearer view out of our port side window because
it is sloped down and not covered in rain. The forward facing windows upstairs
are sloped up and are just sheeted in rain, plus fogged up from the inside. The
bad thing is not being able to see forward. They need a bridge cam channel on
the TV! We saw 4 swans this afternoon.
We tied up after 6pm at the top of the series of Fort
Augustus locks in the pouring rain. The few hardy souls who walked into the
village said nothing had been missed. Dinner was OK. I ate an oaty roll with
butter to make sure I’d have something to eat. They are adamant onboard that
the bread plate and butter knife are bussed off the table before the main
course, so if you want bread you have to get it and get it eaten in about 5
minutes! Dessert was weird. It was some kind of chocolate crunchy wet pie in a
graham cracker crust with a graham cracker ball on the side with a smear of
strawberry sauce and a mint chocolate garnish. The ball was vanilla ice cream
inside. I t was just weird and the flavors didn’t really go together. A man at
our table asked the waitress what it was and she said the menu said strawberry
shortcake but tomorrow we were supposed to have chocolate cheesecake and the
dessert chef had gotten mixed up and
started one instead of the other and we got a hybrid. The man named it Jerry’s Surprise
after the chef and asked to meet him. It was funny and the Filipino chef was
good humored about it. The waitress said she didn’t know what we’d have for
dessert tomorrow. More later.
It is very suspicious that I have not found any of the
pictures Clay took of meals. I suspect at some point I should find the pictures
I’ve been missing. Meaning they are not in the date order of the other files he
gave me. Well, I promise when I find them that I will come back in and add them
to the appropriate day’s post. Sorry about that!
Photos
Photos
