HARP’s HEART Walk Day 6

After our tea break, the walk took us across high moorland, with stunning views towards the mountains in the north, and back towards the west. The Great Glen Way swept slightly north, taking us away from Loch Ness, before we started the descent into Inverness. We made great progress, clocking in 8 miles before lunch, and on the way we passed evidence of old settlement remains, with the stone foundations of a long abandoned house. In the fields beyond there are records of even olde settlement, dating back to the Iron Age, however the fields here were very overgrown with Heather and bracken, and it wasn’t possible to get in to have a good look for any of the remains.Much of the route in the afternoon followed sections of old drove roads, the main routes in the Highlands prior to the construction of the military roads. Drovers would drive herds of hundreds of cattle from the Islands and Highlands, down to the lowland markets in Crieff, Falkirk and Edinburgh. After the Disarming Acts following the Jacobite Uprisings, the drovers were the only civilians in the Highlands who were legally allowed to be armed; a necessity to protect themselves and their cattle from thieves. The drovers travelled light, and at low cost, often sleeping outdoors on their journey, and carrying a bag of oats for simple porridge, or black pudding (sometimes they would cut and drain a small amount of blood from their cattle on the move to make their black pudding).

The military roads created actual, formal route ways across the Highlands, and whilst the drove roads were still in use, they had developed in a very different way over a long period of time.

We were now very near to the end as we came back along a short stretch of the Caledonian Canal, before following the River Ness to our destination at Inverness Castle, originally the location of the Old Fort George, and the finishing line for us on the Great Glen Way! Interestingly enough, Inverness is said to be the site of the Pictish King Brude’s fortress, which St Columba had travelled through the Great Glen to visit! Moving into the medieval period, Inverness Castle was one of the castles captured and slighted by Robert the Bruce during his guerrilla campaign across the country. If you have seen Outlaw King the depictions of how Bruce was able to take castles then slight them to render them useless to the English is fairly accurate. The medieval castle was rebuilt in 1412 by the Earl of Mar who was keen to defend his territories from the marauding Donald, Lord of the Isles. The castle was fought over for the next century by the Lords of the Isles and the Scottish Crown. It was at Inverness Castle that Alexander Macdonald was captured by James I, however, upon his release he would return to burn Inverness to the ground in 1429. His successor John MacDonald, would go on to take and destroy the castle a further three times! Another famous and intriguing figure of Scottish history to get the ‘Holywood treatment’ recently was Mary Queen of Scots, who was refused entry to the castle in 1562 by George Gordon, Earl of Huntly. As a result the castle was stormed by The Fraser and Munro clans who were loyal to Mary.