Breaking Free in Scotland! Day Four

Sorry that I'm taking so long to post! I'm going to try to get caught up today.

Friday 20 May


It was sad to leave Orkney. We caught the 11:00 ferry from the island back to the mainland, and I watched my fantasy land disappear in the fog. I know I'll be going back someday, even if it's after I've published my books and made some money off of them. It's just an amazing place.

When we got back to the mainland, we had to wait an hour for our bus to come to bring us to Loch Ness. While we were sitting inside the ferry office (the bus picked us up right from the pier, it was really nice) I read the first chapter of my book to everyone else in the group, on their request. We had just spent the last day in the land my book takes place in, so they wanted to hear a bit about what the book was like.

While I was reading it, I was really nervous that they were bored, because obviously a lot of the first chapter is exposition and not a whole lot of action. I did my best to put life into the characters as i read it, but i was extremely nervous and my voice kept shaking. They were all listening, but it seemed like their minds were somewhere else. When I'd finished, I felt very sheepish and wasn't really expecting them to say much. Imagine my surprise when Carolyn spoke.

"Tiffany, that was amazingly written! I can't believe that's your first draft!"

The rest of them then joined in, complimenting my writing style as well as the beginning of the story. They all said that they wanted to read the rest of it, and started asking me questions about the two characters introduced at the end of the chapter, even though I haven't entirely developed them that early in the novel. I was very surprised, especially when we got home from Scotland the next day and Carolyn went on to tell other people in the programme how good my book was. I've had a lot of people tell me that it exceeded their expectations, and it makes me feel both excited as well as sheepish. Haha!

Anyway, it was almost perfect timing, because about ten minutes after I'd finished reading, the bus arrived just as the conversation started to die down. We all got on and took out individual seats. Even though it was a four hour ride, it was nice that all of us had time to ourselves to think. The past few days had been very spiritual for all of us as well as character building. Some of us wrote in journals while others simply reflected. I think all of us fell asleep at some point.

The bus took us to Inverness, and then we got on another bus to go to Drumnadrockit (I'm not sure if that's how you spell it...) which is the town that's right on the Loch. The bus dropped us off at the post office, which was also a grocery, and we started walking down the road, stopping to take pictures with a beautiful full rainbow. (We saw nine rainbows on this trip--nine!) Everything was going fine until we saw a sign on the side of the road indicating that the road we wanted was to the left....and also that the road we were on had the same name. It was extremely confusing, but we finally decided to turn left, seeing that there were businesses down the road that might be able to help us.

After we were thoroughly lost, we headed into the local pub to ask if they knew where Loch Ness Hostel was. They told us to walk through the rows of houses and into a field, and that there was a little path leading right to the hostel. We started following his directions, and were very confused when we got to the next road and still hadn't seen any signs for the hostel. We asked a couple of local teenagers who were hanging out in the field where the hostel was, and they pointed to the white building we had just been standing next to. The sign was on the other side.

Trying to find the hostel...

Once we had checked in, we asked the hostel owner about the sites. We knew we wanted to go to the loch's edge, of course, and there is also a ruined castle that stands right next to the loch. It's called Urquhart Castle, and apparently was the resident of my good friend Amber Coleman's family when it was bombed (either that or they're the ones that bombed it...she's not sure ;p). We learned from talking to the owner, however, that the visitors center was now closed and there was no way to get tickets to get in.

"What time does it open in the morning?" Carolyn asked.

"Not until ten," she responded.

We all frowned. We had really been looking forward to seeing the castle, and we had to get on a bus at 8:45.

"Don't worry about it, though," she said nonchalantly. "Just go and climb over the gate."

We stared at her for a minute and she laughed.

"There are no trespassing laws in Scotland," she said. "And it's much better to just go and climb over the gate. It's not crowded and you don't have to pay the entrance fee. Also no one can stop you from climbing over the ruins."

She gave us directions, and we set out after getting a quick dinner at the pub. At first we weren't entirely sure about how we felt about just climbing over the fence, but soon came to terms with the idea. When we looked it up later online, almost everyone suggested the same thing. The only thing you can't get into is the tower, which I was actually excited about, but it's not entirely worth the money. And it was really, really cool to be the only ones there, and to be climbing over these ruins that were centuries old without anyone to stop us. We were able to get really cool pictures that we wouldn't have been able to get otherwise.

We all had the giggles...lol
Carolyn, Chelsea, Meisha, and Kristen at the pub

We passed a ton of sheep that we right up at the side of the
 road. They ran away from us, unlike the cows from the day before ;p

These are real!! They were sitting on the porch of someone's house.
As you can see, they're a different kind of sheep, and apparently
they live as pets and not livestock.

The scenery was amazingly beautiful

Meisha and Kristen climbing over the gate

Chelsea, me, and Kiersten

Kiersten was so excited! This was
what she had been most looking forward to

Unfortunately we couldn't
climb over this gate...

That's me!

Me climbing up the hill. I'm sure this wasn't at all allowed!
I almost broke my wrist on the way down when I fell

Our Nessie sighting! Doesn't it look like it could be?

By the time we got back to the hostel from the castle, we weren't feeling up to heading out to the bay of the loch. We'd already been on the edge when at the castle and seen Nessie from a distance (it was driftwood, but we still took pictures...lol) so we decided to skip it and go to bed early. We contemplated heading out to the bay in the morning, but it was clear the next day that it was not going to happen. We were all too tired.

So that was my day at the famous Loch Ness! It's definitely somewhere you should go once just for the experience and to say you've been there, but I don't feel the need to go again. It was so much fun with this group of girls, though!