Fort Augustus Travel Guide

We swung by here while on a 3-day backpacking tour. It was only 4 pounds, so I think just about everyone on the tour went in. It focused on highland dress, history, etc. It was well done and the presenter clearly loved to subjects. I posted a little more info and photos on my travel blog at:
http://adams-travel-blog.blogspot.com/2009/07/scotland-day-1.html

Its towards the bottom of the post.

4 more images

On my previous visit my sons and I would go down to the canal between cloudbursts to watch the traffic through the locks. A great experience for a 10 and an 11 year old (and their Mom :-). The Caledonian Canal is a shortcut between the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea, still in use by fishing boats and quite popular amongst toursits. We met a norwegian family who had rented a boat at one end and were to deliver it on the other. VT member daarth has taken the trip with his own boat as a part of a longer trip. He has started to make a page about Fort Augustus, at least put up some pictures :-) (Time to finish it, daarth?)

This time, even after waiting patiently quite a while, we saw no traffic through the locks :-( But it was a beautiful day for a stroll along the canal, and to take a brake at one of the many, new pubs along it. We also popped into a heritage center to buy a few souvernirs, and admired the original Nessie sculpture.

Back in 1985 the Abbey was still an abbey, with a boarding school for boys. There was an outdoor pool on the premises, with water from Loch Ness. I can tell you, that water was COLD! How do I know? Hehe, I tried it, ofcourse! It was close to my 30th birthday. My friends at the hotel wanted to close down the whole hotel and make a big barbeque to celebrate it. But my boss wouldn't let me prolong my vacation, even though I had only taken half of what I should have had. So I had to leave the day before my big day. But some of my new friends made me a birthday party anyway: During the darkest part of the night, a group of us sneaked into the Abbey's premises and took a nude dip in the freezing cold water :-)

The school was closed in 1993, and for some years the Abbey was run as a hotel / restaurant / heritage center. It has later been sold to private developers, and is now beeing rebuilt to vacation homes, some for private use and some for rent.

On my second visit in 2006, we were not allowed into the premises due to reconstruction work. Thus my picture is taken from the path along the canal. The linked page has more pictures, some history of the abbey and the area + the story of the turbulent years following the closing of the boarding school ...