What monster?
Trip Start
Mar 29, 2006
1
35
232
Trip End
Feb 28, 2007
Fort William, United Kingdom
Friday, May 19, 2006
Early this morning E & S arrived from London and M (J's husband} arrived from Edinburgh but we were not to see them until late afternoon.
Two hours and ten minutes it took to get to Raigmore hospital and the eye clinic in Inverness. A delightful drive along the west bank of Loch Ness. Very picturesque and very little mention of any mythical monsters. Earlier on in the drive we had to cross the Caledonian canal across various swing bridges all of which were closed except for the last as we entered Inverness.
We took seats in the clinic waiting room after confusing the triage nurse at the front desk with our overseas status
Loch Ness...monsters day off
. The clinic was crowded but after about 15 minutes a nurse took me into a consulting room where she did some preliminary tests after which Anne and I went to have a coffee and a bun. About an hour sitting in the waiting room again Dr. Hewitt summoned me in and he looked closely into my eyes with his strange Dr Who-like microscopic machine and came to much the same conclusion about my retinal membrane except that he defined the problem as either a cyst or a lesion. It is relatively serious should it get worse. He recommended that I go to Glasgow for further tests within the next few days and should those tests prove positive, ie that there was a serious problem, I would require surgery to correct or repair the damage. Needless to say I would not have a bar of any of that. I'd rather go blind in one eye than disrupt this holiday. I obtained a copy of his hand written report and we went back to the car.We started our drive home...in the rain...but stopped at Drumnadrochit to see the Loch Ness monster exhibition...the 'Nessie' story. It was fun. An audio/visual account of the activities on the Loch since some practical joker introduced Nessie to the world in the 1930's including footage of the sightings of the 'monster' and of the various efforts to prove its existence. We wandered through several caves each with a movie screen, a story and some models and although it was all nonsense we did enjoy it
80 year old papparazzi
. The exit forced us through the shop but I denied myself a bookmark this time because of its £2.99 cost. We had sandwiches in the café there and drove on around the corner to Urquart Castle. We looked at the ruins from the car park but did not go in. Further on we stopped at the Commando Memorial which was mounted on a plateau with a 360° panorama of the highlands. The round trip was about 190 miles and by the time we got back I was a tired little vegemite.
D, E and O had gone out for a walk up one of the many Munros around here. They returned about 8 o'clock tired and hungry. They had not reached the top but had made a valiant effort before the weather closed in.
Nearly a full complement for dinner
SATURDAY, 20th May
Anne spent most of the day in the kitchen with the other girls preparing our degustation, 80th birthday dinner for D
Nessie could be in here
. I spent most of the morning on this. In the afternoon I, D, E and B ( P's eldest son who had arrived earlier with his son S) walked down to the village, ostensibly to find out more about the leaks in the pipes up the hillside which we could see from the road. It was a non issue as it turned out. It was only a couple of guys doing steam cleaning or sand blasting maintenance. I walked back along the river bank with D and took a shortcut up the hillside to the house.
The evening meal was a great success if not very substantial. Seven or eight different courses of mostly small portions on large plates but a great time was had by all.
