Two Castles — Urquhart & Invergarry

On our way from the Isle of Lewis, we had to drive again through Isle of Skye, north to south, so basically half the day was lost on the ferry and driving. With our time limited, we basically had to decide where to stop for the night, and planned our sightseeing based on that.

I remember that I was exploring the maps in search of interesting sites and found a nice hotel with an intriguing name, Glengarry Castle Hotel. It was an actual castle repurposed as a hotel. It also had another castle a walking distance away, called Invergarry castle. I searched for any other attractions nearby and found yet another castle a short distance away, called Urquhart castle. That sealed the deal, and we decided to have a castle day.

Urquhart Castle

I think Urquhart Castle is not especially pretty by itself, but it has a lot of land and history associated with it. The views onto Loch Ness are pretty good as well. The facilities at the castle site are excellent, so it was a good spot overall to stop for a rest and a walk. Unfortunately, the admission is not free and it has set visiting hours, so when we paid admission we were told that we had about an hour left to see the grounds. There were still a lot of people around, so we tried to get to see all the ruins.

Invergarry Castle & Glengarry Castle Hotel

It was a long day of driving around Scotland. After Urquhart, we went directly to our hotel. Thankfully, it was very close. By the time we got to the hotel, it was pretty late and started raining, so our arrival there felt like driving onto the set of the “Clue” movie, minus the unfortunate Mr. Boddy.

The hotel has a restaurant on premises, but the reservation is required and it is limited. We were able to secure a dining spot for 7 PM and went to our room to rest. I guess our room was on the unfashionable side of the servants’ quarters, so we had to drag our luggage through a series of steps and corridors to get to it.

After a short rest, we came down for the dinner, which was quite fancy.

After the dinner we felt like going out for a walk. The grounds around the hotel are lovely and romantic.

When we got to the shore of the loch, we saw a sign that pointed the way to Invergarry Castle. It was a short pleasant walk along the shore, and then it went a little further inland before we came to see the castle.

I felt a little bit disappointed. The castle was surrounded by a fence and inaccessible. We went around to see if there was anything worth exploring but found nothing of interest.

The castle reminded me a lot of Nunney Castle we visited in England, except that Nunney Castle was in a much better shape and open for visitors.

We chose a different path to go back to the hotel. The grounds were just as lovely.

By the time we came back, it was already dark. The Glengarry Castle Hotel looks very romantic in twilight.