Woolly says – I woke to a dull cloudy sky in our forest escape ready to take on today’s challenge. The plan, to circumnavigate the world famous Loch Ness, Nessie spotting was going to be the order of the day with a few stops along the way. Our first stop was the small town of Fort Augustus home to a lot of locks and at the top of a loch.

Fort Augustus is a settlement in the parish of Boleskine and Abertarff, at the south-west end of Loch Ness, its main source of income is tourism. It is thought that the village had been built on a Roman small fortification built under Diocletian rule which made me very happy. Having parked up and unloaded the mutt we headed into the Caledonian Centre for a quick coffee and the use of their Wi-Fi.

Built by Thomas Telford in the 1804, connects sea to sea across Scotland through the lochs and bogs, its 60miles long and we have been told that someone is currently swimming it, I peered into the water beneath my feet and promptly decided that they must be mad. The seven locks were brilliant; we wandered upwards to watch the water coming though to raise the levels for the boats going up and down.

As we stood an alarm sounded and the road bridge suddenly started to move to let a huge boat though and into the Loch beyond.

We followed the canal behind the boat passing an ornate memorial to Queen Victoria and a quaint little corrugated church.

The footpath led us down towards the most wonderful of views of mountains and the famous Loch Ness.

Loch Ness is a large freshwater loch taking its name from the River Ness, which flows from the northern end. It is best known for claimed sightings of the cryptozoological Loch Ness Monster, also known affectionately as “Nessie”, I had my eyes peeled.  Lying along the Great Glen Fault, which forms a line of weakness in the rocks which has been excavated by glacial erosion, forming the Great Glen and the basins of Loch Lochy, Loch Oich and Loch Ness. One of the largest in Scotland, and the whole of Great Britain, 22 miles long, 754 feet deep, it has more water than all of the lakes in England and Wales combined, and 564 million people could stand on its surface at the same time, although they might sink so I can’t see it happening personally.

With no Nessie sightings we headed along the side of the Loch towards the wonderful looking Urquhart Castle. Jo obviously hadn’t planned this well as the car park was full and they weren’t letting anyone else on! I was less than impressed.

We pushed on to the next destination, The Loch Ness Centre and home to where the start of the phenomena of Nessie had started. The centre is housed in the hotel where in 1933 where Aldie Mackay came rushing into the hotels bar announcing that she had seen a monster.

Having paid for our tickets we set off on a video story of the loch and its history moving rooms for each section. The first video told us about how Scotland had been formed which was fascinating and even featured a picture of a Woolly mammoth.

Next, we learnt more the myths and legends, one comment was that Nessie isn’t real which of course can’t be true. A cleverly done video came next of the finding of the monster and how people had raced to the place to try and claim the reward that had been offered.

The we went undersea before learning about the real science of the Loch and that Nessie was a load of tosh which upset me greatly. They also showed proof that the most famous picture of ever taken of the monster was actually a toy in the water!!

Feeling rather broken I climbed back into the car to head to the other side of the loch. Our next stop was to The Falls of Foyers, two waterfalls on the River Foyers, which feeds Loch Ness, they consist of the upper falls, with a drop of 46 feet (14 m) and the lower falls, which drop 98 feet (30 m). I took the option of carry down the steps, but Handsome Jack bounced his way down reaching a viewpoint.

Not running at full strength, they were very pretty, having taken a few pictures, we started the trek back to the top.

Our last stop for the day was along the forest and mountain roads; the views were amazing.

The Suidhe Viewpoint is surrounded by mountains, we were on the road known as General Wade’s Military Road and is part of the Jacobite story of the area. With the wind picking up and the tiredness creeping over us all we set off back to our wooden tent in the trees for a spot of supper and a check over tomorrows plan.