Once ashore, we walked through the small town of Invergordon to the bus stop for Inverness. Invergordon has been used as a port for over 300 years. Today the Port of Cromarty Firth is the largest port in the Scottish Highlands. (For those who want to know, a firth is a body of coastal water, typically but not exclusively in Scotland. A firth is frequently an estuary, but can also be a fjord. Grammatically, fjord and firth are interchangable.)
The town has lots of storage tanks, relics from the oil industry. There are oil rigs both in front and behind where we are docked.
There are also many rigs in Invergordon port for repair, updating or because they were just manufactured here.
The steeple in the upper left is the Invergordon Church of Scotland. It opened in 1861, and has served generations of local people as well as servicemen through the two World Wars. The church was closed when we walked there, but a sign indicated that they provide transportation to visiting seamen for shopping and other services.
The town itself is a working town, tidy and functional but not geared towards tourists. We liked walking around admiring the rows of neat stone houses with old style chimneys.
The express bus to Inverness was about 1/2 hour late and crowded. The queue to board was almost - but not quite - comical. Queues are famously orderly in Great Britain, but a gaggle of impatient cruisers are anything but orderly. A young man in the back of bus, sans mask himself, refused loudly to let any “people from cruise ships” to sit in the rows around him. We huddlcd in our KN-95 masks, pointed the vents at ourselves and were happy to arrive at the bus depot.
Inverness’s Old Town is charming and bustling with both visitors and traffic. It boasts a castle, many high-spired churches, picturesque walks along the River Ness (which originates in Loch Ness) and tempting restaurants.
High Street is a pedestrian street for several blocks. Shops line the ground floors, while the upper levels offer a variety of styles, old and new.
The red-sandstone castle is built on the site of a series of defense structures going back to 1057. Mary Queen of Scots found the castle locked to her during the Siege of Inverness in 1562, but the loyal Fraser and Munro clans took the castle for their queen. There were other sieges in 1307, 1429, 1562, 1649, 1650, 1689, 1715 and 1746. The current version of the castle was built by several architects in 1836. It is currently closed for extensive renovation, and expected to reopen in 2025.
We walked about a mile on each side of the River Ness.
One (the more shaky) of the two old pedestrian bridges we crossed.
I wouldn’t have minded a full day here. We only had a couple of hours before we had to catch the bus back to Invergordon. After seeing the scrum that boarded on our way to Inverness, we didn’t want to wait for the latest possible bus back to our port. Indeed, not everyone waiting for our bus made it aboard. Some had to take taxis 25 miles through the countryside to the port at Invergordon.
After we returned to the ship, the captain announced that due to an uptick in COVID cases, masks are now mandatory in all common areas, including the dining areas if you’re not actually eating. We’re really happy to hear this. Before, there were signs everywhere saying “Facemasks Recommended”. But few people wear them consistently. We’ve been avoiding shows and other crowded areas since we boarded, but there are occasions where it’s been impossible to avoid a mass of people - such as full bus to and from Inverness today.
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