In search of Nessie

Gailochy to Banavie

9.16.22 - 9.16.22 58 °F

After breakfast this morning we embarked on our final 90 minute cruise to Banavie near Ft. William. It was a beautiful morning which completed our entire cruise without a drop of rain! Highly unusual in Scotland. As we cruised along the clouds cleared and we were to see the summit of Ben Nevis. Once in Banavie, be boarded a van to get us to Inverness and took a taxi to the airport where we will spend the night before starting our journey home with a 7:00am flight to Heathrow on British Airways.

Ben Nevis is the highest mountain in Scotland, the United Kingdom and the British Isles. The summit is 4,413 feet (1,345 m) above sea level and is the highest land in any direction for 459 miles (739 kilometres). Ben Nevis stands at the western end of the Grampian Mountains in the Highland region of Lochaber, close to the town of Fort William. The mountain is a popular destination, attracting an estimated 130,000 ascents a year, around three-quarters of which use the Mountain Track from Glen Nevis. The 700-metre (2,300 ft) cliffs of the north face are among the highest in Scotland, providing classic scrambles and rock climbs of all difficulties for climbers and mountaineers. They are also the principal locations in Scotland for ice climbing The summit, which is the collapsed dome of an ancient volcano, features the ruins of an observatory which was continuously staffed between 1883 and 1904. The meteorological data collected during this period is still important for understanding Scottish mountain weather.

It has been suggested that Banavie is one of the possible birth places of Saint Patrick. One theory is that Patrick was the son of a Roman tax collector and born at Banavie around AD 389. His family had come with the Romans who had invaded the West Highlands and Islands. The 19th century work 'History of Celtic Placenames' by William J. Watson notes: "St Patrick was born at Banna-venta, an early town south of the Grampians." A similar placename, Bannavem Taburniae, is mentioned in one of the only two known authenticated letters by St Patrick.