Urquhart Castle

the reason lies upstream the hills surrounding the loch are blanketed in peat layers of organic soil built up over thousands of years from decayed forest and plant matter rain falling on the highlands does not run into the lake as clear water as it would elsewhere it seeps through the peat dragging decomposed vegetation along with it and enters the loch carrying the color of over-brewed tea and tons of suspended fine particles the result sunlight penetrates barely a meter or two ten meters down lochness sinks into absolute darkness all year round and every season picture it another way if a diver carrying the most powerful spotlight descended mid-loch on the clearest day imaginable the beam would die like a match struck in fog before a couple of arms length if something ten metres long were swimming just five metres beneath the surface a person standing on the shore a hundred metres away would never see it even if it were the size of a bus the lock is quite literally an enormous black curtain drawn up just a few metres below the surface everything beneath that curtain is invisible and everything invisible could be anything that is the first hydrological truth of lochness it does not hide a monster it hides everything indiscriminately and that is the perfect seed-bed for a legend water temperature is the second detail that sets this lake apart because the loch is so deep and so wide the surface temperature barely fluctuates cold all year round usually around six or seven degrees even in midsummer when the highlands blaze with sunshine locals tell that in roman times when legions marched along the great glen soldiers were warned not to trifle with the water here horses wading in would shudder and cramp in the cold and sudden underwater currents could drag beasts and rider away without a trace there are days when the surface lies calm as a sheet of paper ten minutes later wind pouring westward over the mountains whips up wades taller than a man and a small boat can capsize in an instant the scottish highlands are famous for weather that turns within an hour at lochness the weather turns within a minute that suddenness added to the bottomless black surface is what made people from the earliest times feel that the loch had a temperament a will almost a personality of its own and here lies a remarkable paradox lochness does not sit in some wilderness it lies directly on scotland's main transport axis a road runs along the north-western shore for the lake's entire length and the Caledonian Canal, the great engineering project of the early 19th century linking the North Sea to the Atlantic, passes through the lock itself.

Traffic passes every day, boats moor along the banks, the crumbling old Urquhart Castle jets out on a rocky promontory midlock, and towns on the shore have stood for centuries.

That means that throughout its history, a great many human eyes have looked down upon that water every single day.

this produces an intriguing statistical paradox the more people watching the more chances a legend has to sprout because it takes only one misreading among millions of glances for a story to be born and the more stories circulate the more people believe the harder they stare and the harder they stare the more they find worth telling That loop has been running at Loch Ness for nearly a century, without rest.