On Saturday, I went to Loch Ness! This trip was arranged through the International Society at the University of Aberdeen so I did not have to do any planning. The bus even picked up the other students and myself at our student accommodation. There were about 15 of us on the trip. We traveled to Loch Ness in a van and the journey took about 3.5 hours from Aberdeen. We drove through rain and grey skies almost the entire time so I was expecting a miserable day.
Our first destination was Urquhart Castle, which over looks Loch Ness. The present state of the castle is in ruins. This is my third castle that I have visited in Scotland, all of which have been ruins. Urquhart castle was founded in the 13th century and was quite influential in the wars of Scottish Independence in the 14th century. After several raids over the next few centuries, the castle was abandoned in the middle of the 17th century. Today, tourists can view the remains of this castle. What makes this castle so special and interesting is its geographical position overlooking Loch Ness, which adds a beautiful backdrop to the ruins of the castle. There seems to be nothing around except the castle and the lake. The Grant Tower was the most interesting and most intact part of the ruins. One can read descriptions of what each room used to be. I first like to see if I can guess the function of the room before reading the description. I am always wrong.
Heading about five minutes down the road, we left Urquhart Castle and went to the Loch Ness museum. We were informed about the origins of the Loch Ness Monster. If I remember correctly, the first "sighting" of the monster was in 1933. Following this sighting were thousands of other claims. I was surprised to learn how serious people got when trying to confirm/disprove the status of the monster. Search parties went out, submarine-like machines were built, several ships tested the echos in the water, and cameras were placed along 70% of the lakes area in order to solve this myth. Through research, it has been concluded that several items/living creatures can be mistaken for this black monster: Snorkel, branches and twigs, deer that swim, seals, the wake, buoys, and birds. It seems as though the Loch Ness monster was essentially the equivalent of a crime scene. They had a whole Investigative Team in the 1960s who performed all of this research. I cannot believe that people actually thought that the Loch Ness monster existed. Well, I must say that this myth brings quite a lot of tourism to Scotland so good for them.
After leaving Loch Ness, we drove to a near by town called Fort Augustus. Fort Augustus had a great viewpoint of Loch Ness. My friends and I also stumbled upon St. Benedict's Abbey. To me, the building looks like a beautiful castle. I finally got to see a castle that is not in ruins! Overall, I had a successful day. I am glad that I can finally say that I went searching for the Loch Ness Monster but was unsuccessful.
If my Saturday adventure to Loch Ness was not enough excitement, I decided to go to Elgin (a small town in North Scotland) on Sunday with my friend from Wisconsin. The journey by bus to get to Elgin was about 4 hours so we decided to take a train. This was my first time using a train in Scotland. The seats were comfortable, there was beautiful scenery, and our journey took only an hour and a half. My friend had arranged a tour of Johnstons of Elgin Cashmere Mill for us to take at 12:00 when we arrived in Elgin.
I must say, this was an extremely interesting tour, one of the best tours I have ever been on in my life. I had no previous knowledge about cashmere so this was all new information for me. Because we were at the mill on a Sunday, the mill was not running. However, we got an hour private tour for free! Johnstons of Elgin was established in 1797 and today, is a producer of some of the finest cashmere in the world. The mill was laid out almost as a campus. Each building had a different function for each step in the cashmere making process. We started in the room where the wool is held. What I found quite interesting is that Johnstons gets their wool from goats from Australia, New Zealand, and China. The wool that they get is of extremely high quality. One large bag of this wool costs 10,000 British Pounds. We learned that there are different shades of the wool. Darker shades of wool are used for the darker colors and lighter shades of wool are used for the lighter colors. Johnstons uses all eco-friendly dyes and has approximately 7,000 different shades of dye. The next building we went to was the dye building. The wool is placed into these large vats and is then put in this large, round machine to dye. The dying process takes about 46 hours. Next, we went into this huge room with these really long machines. The died wool is placed into these machines and passes through several stages of pulling the wool apart, flattening it out and rolling it onto cones. The yarn that is on these cones is quite fragile, so the cones are taken across the room to these other machines which spin the strands together in order to create a durable thread. These new cones are then taken to the weaving room. A machine takes the yarn and lays it out vertically. The vertical strips of yarn are then taken to a weaving machine, where with the help of a computer program and some engineering, the final textile pattern is created. The textiles are then washed, brushed, inspected, and cut.
I never realized how much work went into creating cashmere. The machines in this mill are huge and must be extremely accurate to work with these tiny threads. Johnstons of Elgin has about 600 workers and the mill runs 24 hours Monday-Thursday. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take photographs inside the mill. This is simply because Johnstons supplies Cashmere products for luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Hermes, and Chanel. The mill could be creating the cashmere for their next collection which is not yet available in stores. It was so cool seeing Cashmere with the Hermes and Chanel logos as well as the Burberry tweed pattern. Apparently, Burberry is a huge client of Johnstons. Cashmere is truly a luxury good. When browsing products in the store, a blanket was 700 British pounds. I think I will stick to my regular clothing.
After the tour, we headed to the Elgin Cathedral. This cathedral is absolutely stunning. Half in ruins, the cathedral is situated within a graveyard. After taking some pictures at the cathedral, we had planned to take a bus to another city in North Scotland called Banff. When we searched for buses, the bus tracker said that it would take an hour and a half to get there and then four more hours to get back to Aberdeen. We scratched this plan and bought train tickets from Eglin back to Aberdeen. We had about three hours to spare so we went into a bunch of grocery stores. I finally found refrigerated cookie dough at Tesco! I have been craving fresh baked chocolate chip cookies since I arrived. Surprisingly, browsing the shelves in grocery stores took up the majority of this time we had. We took the train back to Aberdeen and watched the beautiful sunset from our seats. This weekend was quite exhausting but extremely rewarding. I do not really have motivation for courses or homework this week. The only thing getting me through this week is thinking about London this weekend!
Comments