The Weekly, every Sunday: one place worth going and one thing worth reading.
Interesting news · Sunday 26 July
A bigger boat for Loch Ness cruises out of Fort Augustus
Inverness-shire · from inverness-courier.co.uk
Photograph · inverness-courier.co.uk
Cruise Loch Ness has put nearly £2 million into a bigger boat, and the 236-seat Voyager of Loch Ness has taken her first passengers out of Fort Augustus. She doubles what the old vessel could carry and lifts the company to more than 450 people an hour from the pier at the head of the Caledonian Canal.
Voyager came up from Plymouth, 650 miles to Buckie, and then spent six months and £800,000 at Macduff Shipyard on a new bar, leather seating and heating that will earn its keep in February.
The detail worth knowing is the 16 sonar screens fitted round the cabin, showing what is moving under the hull as you go. Loch Ness is peat-dark and well over 200 metres deep in places, so the screens show what the eye cannot. Cruise Loch Ness has been sailing here as a family firm since 1968. The new boat brings four more jobs.
Inverness's first dedicated whisky bar, a small and cosy room on Church Street with malts from every region of Scotland and friendly staff to guide you.
A bright yellow café on Church Street in Inverness with hand-made doughnuts and barista coffee by day, and espresso martinis by night at the end of the week.
A bakehouse, coffee bar and cantina on Bridge Street in Inverness, baking sourdough, pastries and cinnamon rolls in an open-plan bakery, with dinner some evenings.
Eden Court turns 50 this year and is marking it with Confluence, a promenade performance that walks audiences through the Inverness theatre's own building from 30 October to 8 November.
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