This morning we meet most of our Country Walkers tour group and our guides and hop on one of two vans and head out of town. Next we pick up the rest of the group – we total 18 plus two guides and a driver – staying at another hotel and admire this piece of “chainsaw art” in the garden there.
Next stop, Culloden Moor.
We very much wanted to visit here having heard much about the Jacobite Uprising and the Battle of Culloden in 1746. We stop first at the visitor center and view the exhibits which provide a chronology of both the Jacobite and Hanoverian activities leading up to the battle. One small room has four screens which in five minutes provide a partial reenactment.
As you turn from screen to screen you feel caught in the middle.
Then we go outside and walk through the battlefield where we see the British battle line.
Next, we check out the memorial.
The battle, which ended Charles Edward Stuart’s effort to claim the crown, ended up changing the way of life for the highland clans who made up the biggest portion of the Jacobite army.
We note the grave markers identified by clan names and pay particular attention to the Clan Stewart of Appin.
This group was on the forefront of the battle, had heavy losses, and we saw the remnant of their battle flag at the museum in Edinburgh.
We also check out nearby Leanoch Cottage which dates from 1760 but is on the same spot as a previous cottage used by the British as a field hospital.
On our way back to the vans, we walk by this wall which used jutting stones to represent the number who died here during the one-hour battle. There were about 50 for the British Army, although more were wounded and likely died later, and 1,200 for the Jacobites.
A few of the Highlander cattle are kept here.
We go back into Inverness and walk along the river towards Loch Ness.
Ross and Ruth, one of our guides, pose outside The Kitchen, our lunch place along the river.
Then we’re back in the vans and off to Skye. The trip took about three hours including driving by Loch Ness,
and a stop at the Eilean Donan Castle.
The castle was built as a defensive site against the Norsemen and later became a stronghold of the Clan McKenzie. The British Navy blew up the castle after the first Jacobite Uprising in the early 1700s. The current castle was rebuilt in the early 1900s. Then we drove over the bridge to Skye. Our home for the next two nights was the Eilean Iarmain Hotel. Our view was over the Sound of Sleat to the Knoydart Hills on the mainland.
Adventures with Sheila 