Our bus ride was pleasant enough with some scenic views of the Scottish landscape and it wasn’t too long before we were dropped off outside Inverness Cathedral where we’d need to return to later in the day for the return trip to the cruise ship. The cathedral is a late nineteenth century building in the Gothic Revival style popular in Victorian Britain and the reason for the square towers rather than spires as you might expect is simply that they ran out of money to complete it. Some lovely decorative work, though.

Across the water of the River Ness from where the bus had dropped us we could see Inverness Castle. It’s another nineteenth century construction in similar red brick to the cathedral although it is situated on the site of former fortresses going back to at least the eleventh century. We’d wanted to visit it because we like castles anyway but also because it’s one of the settings used in Shakespeare’s Macbeth so it would have been the second such castle we’d have looked around after our trip to Kronborg in 2017. However, the castle was still undergoing renovation work at the time of our trip.

We didn’t have much of a plan for Inverness but one possibility we’d considered if the weather was good enough was doing some of the Ness Walk, an easy riverside walk up and down the banks of the River Ness which flowed through the city. The weather was gorgeous so that’s how we started our time in Inverness. Fresh air, pleasing views. Lovely.

There were a couple of little points of interest very close to one another along the walk south on the west side of the river. The first of these was a wooden dog sculpture with the name “Breac“, the Gaelic word for speckled trout. It stood very close to a curving concrete viewing point jutting out over part of the water, named the Gathering Point. It turns out that the former is a protest response to the latter with some locals finding the concrete construction an eyesore and wanting to put something pretty up instead. I’m not a dog person but I do like modernist and brutalist construction so that puts me firmly in opposition to the locals here but it’s nice that there’s place for both types of artistry to co-exist.

Our walk brought us to the Ness Islands at which we crossed to them and walked through to the other side of the river using some footbridges.

We quite enjoyed spotting some nicely-sculpted benches of all different designs in the quiet, wooded area of the islands and we even sat down for a rest for a bit and to enjoy the sound of the water trickling past nearby. A beautifully tranquil spot in Inverness.

We passed a couple of points of interest as we made our way northwards now on the eastern side of the River Ness where the Ness Walk apparently becomes Ladies Walk for some reason.

The first of these was the Forbes Fountain, classified as a listed building. This functional granite sculpture (dating from the late nineteenth century again) was once situated in the city centre where it formed a central focus point although was not universally loved by some who felt it got in the way of public events. It was moved to its current location during some road-widening scheme in the 1950s during which time the tall spire that had once adorned it was damaged beyond repair and removed.

A little further along the riverside walk we reached the bronze and red and yellow sandstone war memorial, erected originally in 1922 to commemorate those lost in World War I but later rededicated to include those from later conflicts.

The statues of Faith, Hope, and Charity below used to grace the top of a store in the city centre but fell into private ownership hands when that building was demolished, only returning to public view to be mounted together along the bank of the River Ness in 2011.

With our Ness Walk concluded we next headed into the more commercial part of the centre of Inverness although it wasn’t shopping on our mind but rather a visit to the Inverness Museum and Art Gallery. It wasn’t a very large museum but that suited us fine, and some of the pieces on display were very good indeed.

Back outside in Inverness we had one more place we wanted to visit before heading back and so we wound our way through the streets, past a few sculptures, and found the Black Isle Bar where we took the weight off our feet then put the weight on our waists with some pizza and a few of the locally-brewed beers. Great location, great food and drink.

And that brought our time in Inverness to a conclusion, leaving just a short walk back to the Ness Bridge and a casual stroll to the cathedral again to wait for the bus to return.

We had lovely weather for our somewhat casual few hours in Inverness but there was plenty there to see and it’s one of those cities that just left us feeling that yes, this is the sort of place we could live in. We’d not hesitate to return.

In the next post in this British Isles cruise series we return to Invergordon and I head off alone just to take some photos of the place along with its street art before returning to the ship and sailing off towards the penultimate port of call.

We didn’t have any plans to look around Invergordon at all prior to visiting, knowing that other than being the home of the Stoltman brothers – we do like strongman competitions – there didn’t appear to be much to do or see there. I’ve mentioned already that some of the excursions on this cruise seemed to be far too expensive – perhaps a reflection on having lots of Americans on the ship and them really not knowing any better so being easier to fleece, but also perhaps Britain just not being a cheap place to visit when the only people getting subsidised by taxpayers are the already-wealthy and corporations or entities that prioritise shareholders over the public good (always with the politics, Mark) – so we ruled out trips with specific purposes and picked a drive with free time to explore around nearby Inverness instead. You can read that here: Inverness And The Ness Walk. Spoiler: we loved Inverness.

However, as our bus took us from the cruise port on the short drive to the lovely city to the south we passed through the outskirts of Invergordon and I spotted some street art. I like street art. So, upon our return, and having a bit of time before everyone needed to be aboard, I headed into Invergordon alone – my wife wanted to get back to the room – and had a short stroll to take some pictures.

A lot of Invergordon’s buildings can be dated to the latter half of the nineteenth century when the town began to expand around the harbour. The town hall and parish church were both erected within ten years of each other during this period.

Later, just prior to the First World War breaking out, a naval base was built in anticipation of what was to come and it featured during both global conflicts of the twentieth century. More interestingly, the base was the site of the UK’s last naval mutiny in 1931. The base closed down in 1956 but the deep water port that had been in use during that time is still in use, and we know that because that’s where our cruise ship docked.

Invergordon’s street art is called the Off The Wall mural trail and was officially opened by Princess Anne in 2007 although the idea for the public artwork came about five years earlier. In addition to the pieces that are properly part of the trail there were some other smaller works that were just as enchanting.

Invergordon is not a large place at all and if you’ve got an hour to spare then you could easily walk most of it and find all the street art. I didn’t quite find them all but I also wasn’t using a map for this and just simply wandered around at random. This wandering around did lead to an interesting encounter (at a distance) with one of the locals on the other side of the street. Fairly young, pink lycra, smoking, walking several dogs on leads, and generally shouting her head off at everybody and nobody in particular. Head down, Mark, don’t make eye contact.

I headed back to the port at this point and spent a small fortune at the gift shop before boarding. After that it was just a case of relaxing on the balcony and then watching the Scottish landscape drift slowly by as Regal Princess made her way out to sea, passing by a couple of large platforms: the Stena Spey and the Well-Safe Defender. The Cromarty Firth is often used as a parking lot for these sorts of rigs or for those awaiting removal to be scrapped.

In the next post in this British Isles cruise travelogues series we’ll reach the penultimate port of South Queensferry which is often used by cruise ships looking to disgorge their passengers on Scotland’s capital of Edinburgh. That wouldn’t be what we ended up doing on the day, though.