Searching for the Loch Ness monster
by Anna Selby
The idea wasn't originally mine at all. The monster had invaded my son's consciousness around the age of two and simply refused to leave. It had taken him five years of chiselling away at my idea of what makes a good holiday (long haul, a different culture, plenty of sun) but eventually Christian had got his way. We were off on the sleeper car to Inverness to spend half term in search of the Loch Ness monster.
'Sleeper' is a misnomer when travelling with young children - a train with beds is an adventure in itself. Having explored his cabin, worked out the blind mechanism and ransacked the goodie bag, Christian woke me every hour shrieking with delight.
'Wake up, it's morning!' It was four o'clock actually.
'Look, bunnies!' Four thirty.
'Scotland is cool!'
It was certainly a good deal chillier than London and, at the end of May, we spent most of the time wearing the thermals we'd bought to go skiing. But driving along the side of the loch in the early morning mist, you have to agree that Scotland is pretty cool. The dark water and the silhouettes of the surrounding hills create a magnificently brooding and mysterious atmosphere. And you really start to feel that, if there isn't something out there lurking under the water, there certainly ought to be.
And, after all, people have been seeing the monster since the sixth century. Many of these sightings have been attributed to tricks of the light, floating logs and whisky-induced hallucinations. One of the most famous sightings was in 565 when Saint Columba, busy converting the Scots to Christianity, told Nessie off for chasing one of his monks who was bathing in the loch. After that, Nessie became a quiet, shy beastie and tended to avoid humans whenever she could.
Even so, there have been thousands of sightings since. The majority of them have been made from Fort Augustus Abbey by the monks (no suggestions of whisky there, of course) and by fishermen and other locals who know the loch well and are unlikely to be fooled by tricks of the light or flotsam and jetsam. My son, in any case, needed no convincing. He simply knew there was not just one Nessie but a whole family of them concealed in the peaty depths.
We started our research at the Official Loch Ness Monster Exhibition in Drumnadrochit. Loch Ness is the biggest body of water in the UK - twenty-two and a half miles long and almost 800 feet deep. You could stand three Big Bens on each others' heads and they still wouldn't reach the top. Plenty of room for a monster then.
The search for Nessie has been relentless - countless scientists, submarines and sonar expeditions have been tracking her for decades. She has been spotted crossing the road into the heather. A bounty of #100,000 was offered by a circus ringmaster for her capture. There have been photographs (many of them hoaxes) and even a film that mysteriously disappeared. The jury, however, is still out.
Christian was determined that he would be able to find her. A child's perfect holiday, however, entails not just a monster, but constant activity while you search for it. First we went to Urquhart Castle, which stands on the banks of the loch and is surely the most romantic ruin you could find anywhere. In the film Loch Ness, this was where Nessie visited the little girl who became her friend. The day we went, though, she must have been up at the Abbey instead ...
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