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+ | ====== A journey in Nessie' | ||
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+ | ** Gregory Gutierez is a French journalist and a member of the Institut Metapsychique International, | ||
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+ | Last year, I spent a week in the country of the well-known Nessie, the elusive Loch Ness monster, in Scotland. | ||
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+ | My journey to the country of the Loch Ness had one main goal : to discover how Nessie' | ||
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+ | Is Nessie a mere legend, or is there something real down the lake, this was not a mystery I seriously wanted to solve in only one week. I only knew Nessie was real in a peculiar way : in the folklore of the country and in its shops. | ||
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+ | I began my trip in Inverness, in the very North of the Loch Ness. | ||
+ | I expected to see lots of Nessies in the streets of Inverness, guessing he was some kind of a national hero there, and a good opportunity to get money out of the purses of tourists. | ||
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+ | But I was somehow disappointed : apart from a green, big and joyful plastic Nessie encountered in a service station, there was no trace of Nessie in this town. At least I could see the road signs to " | ||
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+ | In the main museum of Inverness, devoted to local wildlife and old crafts, I couldn' | ||
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+ | I left Inverness to take the Nessie Trail, the road linking Inverness to Fort Augustus at the South of the lake. This road is snaking between the Loch Ness banks and the woods on the hills surrounding the latter. I couldn' | ||
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+ | And what a beautiful view indeed : for the first time I saw the waters of the Loch. The lake is very impressive and looks like a small inner sea, especially when you see it on a cloudy and windy day. Yes, there were waves on the water - it is said these waves can be very huge - and yes, of course, I tried to look thoroughly on the surface, hoping to catch a glimpse of Nessie. | ||
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+ | Few miles after Inverness was a notice board on the side of the road, presenting the lake to the tourists : wow, a very huge lake indeed, 300 meters deep and abou 30 kilometres long. And there was Nessie, | ||
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+ | A few miles from it, the fabulous - and very small – village of Drumnadrochit. For a French guy, the name itself is weird (I guess it is weird for people there too). But this small town is the place where Nessie settled his headquarters. Here one can find the Loch Ness Monster Original Centre and the Loch Ness Monster Official Centre. The main attraction of both centres is the size of the " | ||
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+ | The Official Centre provides a somewhat entertaining display of imaginative scenes presenting archaeological times of the Loch, species in the Loch, monster in the Loch, hunters on the Loch trying to catch the monster with boats or yellow submarines. Even with all these special effects, one cannot learn very much at all but the scenes are not so bad. | ||
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+ | The Original Centre is more interesting. A quite old but entertaining video documentary in a small cinema. Colours are fading and the voice of the commentator is a little too theatrical ("What is this thing living in the lake !? A creature !? A beast !?") but you learn about sightings in detail and you hear the witnesses speaking, including Father Gregory in Fort Augustus, whose testimony sounds pretty convincing. The corridors around the room are filled with reproductions of well-known photographs and some issues of magasines dealing with Nessie, inlcuding some old Fortean Times. But what disturbed me was, again, the “Surgeon’s Photograph”, | ||
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+ | Let’s leave Drumnadrochit and its centres. Now is Fort Augustus, final point of my trip. Fort Augustus is a very pleasant village in the South of the Loch. Here you can take a look at an original representation of Nessie, made of flowers, with his baby. And nothing is forgotten, the mouth of the baby is a tin box so you can slip your money into it (what for ? Not explained). Fort Augustus is one of the cities in which you can buy a ticket for a “cruise” on the Loch. I was holding my camera ready bfor this exploration ! Loch Ness at last ! On the boat a guide explained everything about the Loch, real facts and legends, like these rocks fallen from a hill, supposed to be "a track made by the monster when he once tried to get out of the lake, as the local legend says". But to me it sounded as if this legend was made for tourists only. | ||
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+ | On the lake, you are quickly impressed by the lovely banks and the black waters. When you know it is 300 meters deep, you can't help thinking about creatures swimming at the bottom. By the way, on the lower deck, a second guide tells you about the searchings for the monster, and there is a screen showing a sonar view of the depths, with yellow, green, blue and red vertical lines. Everybody is hoping for an unusual shadow on the screen. Maybe Nessie is right behind the boat ? | ||
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+ | On the boat, a small advert for a local searcher selling tiny little hand-made " | ||
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+ | End of my week in Loch Ness. Well, Nessie is well alive in shops and touristic activities, but less than I thought. In the bookshops I did find more books about the Bermuda Triangle or UFOs than about Nessie himself. The lake is very deep, there is not so much activity around it, and except the small village of Drumnadrochit, | ||
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+ | ~~LINKBACK~~ | ||
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+ | ~~DISQUS~~ |