History Day

I love history, Sam loves monsters! so the family had pre agreed to split today into three ‘chunks’ but first breakfast.
I had spent two and a half of my three and a half year apprenticeship in Scotland so the traditional Scottish breakfast was for me. I’d forgotten how good the black pudding was as opposed to the packaged stuff available in English supermarkets, I thoroughly enjoyed my breakfast in Forres before we set off for chunk one.

Culloden, a bleak and dismal Sunday morning was the ideal time to visit this very emotive and atmospheric battlefield where the 1745 Jacobite Rising came to a tragic end. This isn’t the forum to wax lyrical about my love of history, particularly British, suffice to say I am very lucky to have a family that allow me to indulge myself. As I walked the waterlogged site, past the Clan Memorials, the information boards, Leanach Cottage, the flags marking the opposing forces start points I felt myself feeling the same emotions I had felt on previous battlefields, Normandy, Changi, the Falklands etc. These sites are haunting yet you find yourself drawn to them.

On to chunk 2, Loch Ness Visitors Centre, we travelled out through Inverness and then on to the A82, the Old Military Road, skirting the Loch. So now having traversed the Caledonian Canal and Loch twice onboard RN ships I was driving alongside it. The scenery is breathtaking and the old cliche, “why go abroad when there is so much to see here” came to mind. Finding the Visitor Centre & Shop closed for renovation Sam masked her disappointment and enjoyed her surroundings. We continued travelling on down to Kilmore where at last Sam got her souvenirs and sadly we said “cheerio” to Josh who headed back north. It will not be for long, he travels to Cornwall on leave next week.

On we went, past Urquhart Castle, through Fort Augustus to Spean Bridge.

Chunk 3 and the Commando Memorial is somewhere I have long wanted to visit and I was not disappointed. The memorial itself along with its Remembrance Garden is everything I thought it would be, although it is moving it dominates the skyline but the scenery viewed from standing at its base - Wow - astounding. breathtaking do not begin to cover it.

As the sun set we continued south, twisting and turning on the single lane roads through the Loch Lomond & Trossochs National Park, passing deer as startled by our presence as we were by theirs, until we reached the motorway and Glasgow. We decided to press on until we reached the services just north of Lockerbie where a coffee and burger saw us ready to press on.

At midnight we were well down the M6 heading home.