Loch Ness

OVERVIEW

A 23-mile loch in the Great Glen, 230 metres deep and holding more water than every lake in England and Wales together, with Urquhart Castle on a promontory near Drumnadrochit and the A82 along its north shore. Nessie is the world's best-known cryptid; the Loch Ness Centre at Drumnadrochit and the Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register keep the record.

HISTORY

Adomnán's Life of St Columba, written around 700, has the saint drive off a 'water beast' in the River Ness in 565. The modern story begins on 2 May 1933 with the Inverness Courier's report of Aldie Mackay's sighting from the new road, and the Spicers' account that July of a creature crossing the road; Hugh Gray's photograph followed in November and the 'surgeon's photograph' of April 1934, which in 1994 was admitted to be a toy submarine with a sculpted head. Operation Deepscan swept the loch with sonar in 1987; a 2018 environmental-DNA survey found no reptile DNA and a great deal of eel.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

Thousands of sightings since 1933, a handful of ambiguous sonar contacts, and photographs and films of which none has survived analysis. Scientists explain the rest as waves, wakes, birds, otters, seals, logs and expectation; the Register logs several claimed sightings a year. The entry records the case as the most-studied cryptid on earth.

VISITING

Urquhart Castle (Historic Environment Scotland) is ticketed; the shore is public along much of the A82 and the Loch Ness 360 trail. Boat trips from Drumnadrochit and Fort Augustus.