Hello Everyone

As we said in our last newsletter - how time flies:- well, the last couple of months have certainly flown past. So quick in fact that for the first time since we started Evergreen in 2002, we have missed a monthly newsletter!! It was only today when I sat down to write the July letter that I realised that our last newsletter was May - where was June??? How could both Graeme and I have forgotten the newsletter? No answer I'm afraid but I hope we can fill you in on two months of news with this one!

We were certainly very busy at the beginning of June with guests, we were trying to complete a submission for this year's Scottish Thistle Awards which are the premier tourism awards for all tourism businesses across Scotland and Graeme also had a day down in London. London is very easy to do in a day - an early flight from Inverness means you can be in central London by 10.30 am and the return light in the evening gets you home by 11.00 p.m. Quite a contrast to the quiet and tranquility of Loch Ness. However, the reason for the trip was to collect an award we had received from the Institute of Hospitality. Last October we went through a fairly rigorous process and were accredited with Hospitality Assured, a standard for service and business excellence in the hospitality industry. The award we received last month was as the "highest scoring newcomer to Hospitality Assured in 2008". We are immensely proud to have achieved this as it is covers all businesses across the whole of the UK.

You will know from previous newsletters that Graeme is always out and about running the hills, but since early March I had been in training so that I could climb a mountain! Not any old mountain, but Ben Nevis which at 4006 feet is the highest mountain in the UK. It is not technically difficult but what makes it a challenge is that the climb starts from sea level - no easy drive in with just a couple of thousand feet left to climb. We started early in the morning and although the weather was disappointing - wet and misty - we got to the top 4 hours later, after trudging though 3 remaining banks of snow (yes - still snow in early June!) Unfortunately we didn't really see anything from the top but as we started to descend, the weather cleared and we got the most fabulous views of Fort William below and the surrounding area. Because of the large number of people who climb Ben Nevis, a huge amount of effort has gone into constructing a stony path to ensure that the amount of erosion is kept to the very minimum. I wholeheartedly agree that this path is essential but it does make for very difficult walking. Ben Nevis is just over an hour's drive from Evergreen so if you to fancy a challenge while you are here???.....

But talking about challenges - how would you like to run 95 miles in under 35 hours?? Some of you may have heard of the West Highland Way which is one of our long distance footpaths which runs from from Milngavie, just north of Glasgow to Fort William. Generally you can walk the 95 miles is around 5 or 6 days. Well, there is a WHW running event. Graeme's younger brother and his wife are both ultra marathon runners. Essentially an ultra marathon is anything longer than 26 miles - normally either 50 or 100 miles. The WHW race started at 1.00 a.m. on Saturday 21st June (midsummers day) and the runners run through the night and the next day. For those in the elite section they finish within 24 hours! Neil and Carolyn took a little longer but successfully completed the event with a few hours to spare from the 35 hour cut off time. Lots of support was required and Graeme helped out by running/walking for the last 45 miles or so. My task was to have the support vehicle at every checkpoint so that our runners could refuel - eating and drinking is such an important element of an endurance race. It is a long long time since we have both gone without sleep for around 50 hours and I can tell you that as soon as our heads hit the pillow around 3.00 p.m. on the Sunday we were sound asleep!

But what has been happening around Loch Ness? Well, just last week we had a royal visitor to the area. Her Majesty The Queen officially opened the £160 million hydro electric scheme at Glendoe at the south end of Loch Ness. This massive project is Scotland’s first conventional large scale hydro electric power station for 50 years and can produce up to 100MW of electricity. Graeme and I were lucky enough to be taken on a tour of the construction site and dam last year and now that all the works have been completed we very much hope that Scottish and Southern energy will provide tours of the area as it is a hugely impressive piece of engineering (14 miles of tunnels were built into the hillside above Loch Ness) and one which took into account the very significant environmental issues in the area.

Our last newsletter had the wonderful pictures of our pine marten picking up his evening dinner. Don't know where he has got to of late but we haven't seen him for a few weeks. Pine marten do cover quite a large area so perhaps he is just spending time in another of his haunts! But we do have some wildlife to tell you about this month. A great spotted woodpecker has been visiting our bird feeder recently and just yesterday I managed to get a photograph of the female feeding a young male. I am sure that there are two young flying about so we will have to keep our eyes peeled to see if I can catch all three together.

Till next month - August that is!

Fiona and Graeme

Hello Everyone

May already - how time flies! May and September it is said, are the best months to visit the Highlands because the weather is usually fairly settled and the colours of the landscape are at their finest. Well, the present weather may not be great but all around us here there is a profusion of colour - purple rhododendrons, white blossom of wild cherry trees, the yellow of the broom and of course the yellow wild primroses that carpet the edges of our wooded areas. And still to come this month.... the wild bluebells that seem to strike a chord with everyone. The fact of course that bluebells have been out for sometime further south just tells you how much colder our winter was this year. In fact, two friends of ours climbed Ben Nevis last week and reliably informed us that there was two feet of snow on the summit....brrr!!

As for the wildlife here at Evergreen, the squirrels are as active as ever and our friendly pine marten has continued to make regular visits. As you may know if you read our blog, recently he was caught on camera by one of our guests, carrying away his 'evening meal'. Pine Martens are relatively rare to see in daylight but they are nonetheless very inquisitive and our one is certainly no exception as on one occasion last week he came right up to our patio window and stared at me nose to nose through the window. Wonderful! Thank you to MR for kindly allowing us to use his photographs.

Also last week I was fortunate to see another rare sighting, this time of wild goats. There are not many around Loch Ness and those that are stick to the most isolated areas where people rarely visit but I was in just such an area out running with friends. After staggering up a steep incline, a large billy goat made a dash right in front of us to be followed in close pursuit by another and a young kid. The area we were in is close to the village of Foyers but it is also an area of no tracks or paths which stretches along the steep banks of Loch Ness for 12 miles down to Fort Augustus at the head of the loch. At the high point we were 1800ft above Loch Ness and had great views in all directions. The only downside of the run was that I picked up a nasty tic on my leg which I fortunately discovered when I got home and was able to swiftly remove with tweezers. Seems to be a lot of them around in the heather this year but you really want to avoid them as they can transmit Lyme disease.

Foyers was in the news a couple of weeks ago because a local person is selling some land that once belonged to the infamous Aleister Crowley of Boleskine House which is just along the road from us here at Evergreen. For those of you who regularly read our newspage you will be familiar with this man who gained the reputation as the 'most wicked man in the world' but who ultimately was a con man and a drunkard. Nevertheless as I passed the house while out running yesterday I reflected on the day I was invited up to the house by the present owners. I remember sitting in this huge room alone while the owner went to get coffee and there is no question it felt rather strange knowing what all went on in the house all those years ago.

Crowley is of course only one of many infamous and famous people to have stayed around loch Ness over the years. Divach Lodge near Drumnadrochit was the choice of J M Barrie, Anthony Trollope, Henry Irving and Arthur J Lewis and once, Sir Winston Churchill. This was of course in an age when transport in the Highlands was somewhat more difficult and I finish this newsletter with some information I only discovered this week. Back in the 1890's there was a plan to extend the railway from Inverness out to Lochend at the head of Loch Ness. It never happened because of the cost and concerns over viability but one wonders what if it had happened:- would bringing thousands of people out to the shores so long ago have changed the area from the wild and still relatively undeveloped area that it is today, to perhaps something more akin to an Alpine resort?

Till next month

Graeme & Fiona

Hello Everyone 

Firstly, a huge thank you to all our recent guests who have taken the time to write a review of their stay on TripAdvisor. This medium is becoming much more widely used and good reviews are quite literally, worth their weight in gold. We are really delighted with all the fabulous and informative comments which have been posted. These reviews are confirmation that our guests really do enjoy their stay at Evergreen and will hopefully be used by others to help them decide to come and stay as well.

On a slightly different tack, but also relevant in keeping everyone up to date with what we are doing, Graeme and I have taken the plunge and set up an Evergreen blog. Although we have our monthly newsletter we felt that there is so much that we see around the Loch on a daily basis that it would be fun to share it with others. There are only a few postings so far but we would be delighted to receive your comments on any of our "Evergreen musings" as we have called the Blog! To find our new blog on the Evergreen website just follow this link - http://www.blog.evergreenlochness.co.uk/

As Spring is in the air - well - we had a couple of really beautiful days last week with bright blue skies and continuous sunshine when the temeperature reached 17C - it is time to get out and about in the garden. First on the large list of to do things was to cut down some trees in Hazelgrove garden. Graeme did all the initial work of felling and chopping then it was up to me to transport all the logs up to the log shed where they will dry out slowly over a couple of years before they can be used in the wood burner in Hazelgrove. My next task over the coming weeks will be to sort out all the planters around Evergreen and then I will have fun choosing the flowers to plant.

The primroses which I mentioned in my last newsletter are now popping up all along the roadside verges. We particularly noticed them last Sunday when we took part in the annual litter pick up along the road from Foyers to Dores. It is so sad to see litter dropped in our beautiful countryside and we simply cannot understand the mentality of those litter louts who prefer to dispose of their litter by throwing it out of their car window rather than taking it home with them. For a little while at least, the verges are looking great and what you notice is the flowers rather than the litter which is definitely the way it should be.

As regular readers of our newsletter will know, we are always on the lookout for interesting facts and ditties about the area. In our local community newsletter which comes out every quarter there was a great article explaining that the village of Foyers has the highest number of named roads in the area. One road name in Lower Foyers which does not appear on any road map is Kelvin Way, which passes the front of the old British Aluminium factory. The road was named after Lord Kelvin the electrical/thermal engineer and inventor, who was involved with the design of the equipment in the factory.Then there is Enuck's Brae which is a small stretch of road as you leave Foyers which was named after a woman who used to come down to Foyers for milk. We also have Murray's corner which was named after an early Police Constable of the area. But perhaps the most interesting road is The Uchdach which is the road which was built by Italian prisoners of war in the First World War. And finally, for those of you who have experienced our single track roads, this last road name is just for you. At Torness during the early seventies, the resulting widening of the B862 from single to double track was dubbed Murdo's Motorway - named after the local councillor who lived nearby at Torness Post Office!!

Until Next month - we wish everyone a very Happy Easter

Graeme and Fiona

Hello Everyone

Lots of news to tell you about in and around Loch Ness this month. It appears that a wide variety of inhabitants could be rubbing shoulders with Nessie. The search for our elusive monster has given an insight into the rich variety of fish in Loch Ness. Some of these are native and others have been introduced for a variety of reasons such as live baiting to catch larger fish. Then there are those which have simply been introduced or escaped and even more may have been brought in as eggs on the legs of birds. Salmon, brown trout, three-spined sticlebacks, perch, pike and eels are among the sixteen different species found in the loch but the arctic charr is perhaps the most fascinating fish, especially as it has long been though or as an Ice Age relict.

So that is what is happening in the loch while on the south side we are really pleased to see that the Forestry Commission have been very busy clearing all the laybys on the stretch between Dores and Inverfarigaig. Last summer it was becoming so difficult to see the loch from either the road or from the laybys because the broom and hazel trees particularly had grown so much that they were obscuring the wonderful views of the Loch. As a result of the work carried out visitors this year will be able to stop and marvel at the sheer expanse of water, watch the small cruisers make their way up and down the loch and maybe even spot something in the water??

Our local newpapers have been covering a story over the last couple of weeks which suggests that the centre of Inverness could be transformed into a film set from next month as Bollywood comes to the Highlands. A major Indian film company hopes to start shooting its latest production, a psychological thriller called Purple Lake — the title being based on Loch Ness, in a few weeks time. The film company had been very impressed with Inverness as a location as they found it to be so diverse. Although it is a relatively small city it has everything they need - old and new buildings, modern buildings and of course the castle which sits above the river Ness in the centre of the city. It will be really exciting if everything falls into place and filming does start next month.

Although we had more snow overnight last week everything is beginning to grow around the loch. The wonderful little white snowdrops have appeared over the last few days and it won't be long until the verges on the south side are again covered with wild yellow primroses. We are so lucky to live in an area which provides such a beautiful display of these pretty little flowers year after year.

Although there is a little more food around for the garden birds I am still making sure that they are fed each day. I counted 8 bluetits on the bird feeder one day last week and it is great to see our other regulars including coal tits, robins, dunnocks, blackbirds, chaffinches and a little wren. And of course our red squirrels are continuing to thrill our guests at Evergreen. They can be seen on the bird table and on the bird feeder each morning at breakfast. We can guarantee you will see two but if you are lucky, three will appear at the same time, often chasing each other around the garden and up and down the trees. I know that they have been well fed over winter but one squirrel in particular is looking very fat and I wonder if we are about to see a spring litter. There are two peaks of litter production each season, with spring litters produced between February and April and summer litters between May and September. If we do have a heavily pregnant female it will be at least another 8 - 10 weeks before any young are ready to leave the drey.We will certainly be keeping our fingers crossed here for some additions to our little group.

Until next month

Fiona and Graeme