Tuesday 1st October, 2024 – Inverness, Culloden

Distance driven: 19.0 miles
Time at the wheel: 40 minutes
Heiland coos spotted: 0

After a lot of mileage the previous day it was very pleasant to start the day with a leisurely 20-minute drive to Culloden and the battlefield centre, which is run by the Scottish National Trust. As members of the English version, we’re entitled to free entry to SNT properties too, and we’d already made us of the reciprocal arrangement when we discovered we could park for free at Glen Coe the day before. We were soon indoors, walking round the very interesting and well-laid out story of the lead-up to the battle. It helps that the display is in a long, winding corridor where one wall covers the  Jacobite side and the other the government side.

The Battle of Culloden on 16 April 1746 was a fiasco that shouldn’t have happened, frankly. At least in my estimation. The last last pitched battle on British soil that lasted less than an hour, and led to the deaths of 1,300 men, all but around 50 of them Jacobites. It had already started going badly wrong for Prince Charles Edward Stuart before his men ever made it to an open plain in the rain and fog just outside Inverness. Fighting to reclaim the thrones of Britain from the Hanoverians for his father, James, a Stuart king, he was up against the forces of George II’s government army (led by the Duke of Cumberland, George’s son), a man who only ever won the one battle. However, the Jacobite had made it as far south as Derby, but then turned round and headed back north. In January they’d been victorious at the Battle of Falkirk, but it wasn’t a given that they would continue to succeed. They were running out of money, help from France (that was promised but just kept on not showing up), and supplies. The Jacobite soldiers were restricted to a ration of just 3 biscuits a day. The men were scattered across the countryside as Charles headed to Inverness to try and stop the Duke of Cumberland’s troops taking the town. Despite summoning the commanders to join him, no one sane thought it was a good idea to go into battle in their current state.

Cumberland, on the other hand, marched his troops from Aberdeen in good order and camped at Nairn so he could celebrate his 25th birthday. The soldiers had extra rations, and were even given brandy, so their morale was pretty high. Meanwhile Charles planned a surprise night attack. Which might have been a good idea, but the local who were supposed to guide them got them lost, they couldn’t move fast enough, and after a 12 mile stagger across open country, they decided it was taking too long and so a bunch of disorganised, demoralised, starving men turned round and headed back, 12 miles in the other direction. No sane person would have committed to a fight under those circumstances, but royalty don’t often tend to be the sharpest knives in the box. And so it proved. Despite exhausted men, and men who were away looking for food, or who hadn’t yet got there, Charles refused to retreat. The Prince preferred to fight where they stood, on the moor at Culloden. With Cumberland’s army in sight, the pipers began to play and the tired army struggled into position.

At around 1pm, the Jacobite artillery opened fire. The government responded with their own cannon, and the Battle of Culloden began. It didn’t help that the Jacobites had new guns that they had not been trained in the use of and could only fire once every four minutes, while the government troops could fire every four seconds. The Jacobites stuck it out as long as they could and then resorted to the tactic they’d used before, the Highland charge. They thought it had worked every time up until now so of course it would work again. It didn’t. Charles watched from safety as the Duke of Cumberland took the victory and then ran for it – he may be a romantic hero to many but he’s always looked like an idiot to me, and I see no reason to change my mind after our visit to the battlefield.

And we know all this because we went on the included tour with Jamie, who was very informative, very funny, and very good. As we stood there in an unexpected hailstorm, listening to his expert retelling, we pretty much understood how the men there must have felt on the day. We felt it even more when we could only get a coffee and nothing to eat because the EPOS machines had failed in the café and they could only take cash! Feeling rather damp, but considerably more enlightened, we turned the car back towards Inverness and parked up at our AirBnB. We would walk into town and see what we could find to see in Inverness on a Tuesday.

As it turned out, quite a lot. Although some things are simply not open to the public (the Castle which will eventually be open again, the Town House which won’t) plenty of things were. Starting with the rather fabulous Victorian Market and especially the Food and Drink Hall where a fine selection of street food operators have taken up residence and will feed you very well indeed. After a trawl round all the stalls we settled for a sweet chilli cheese sausage roll from Bad Girl Bakery  and loaded wedges from Highland Pulled Meats (who wouldn’t go for skin on wedges with haggis, cheese, crispy onions and whisky mayo?). Adding a prosecco each from Moonshine Inverness made for a very pleasant lunch break.

From there we headed over to the Cathedral, a Victorian Gothic building on the banks of the river. The Cathedral Church of Saint Andrew (1866–69) is both the northernmost extant diocesan cathedral in mainland Britain, but also the first new Protestant cathedral to be completed in Great Britain since the Reformation. It’s a lot smaller than you might expect, but has some fine stained glass windows. 

From there we decided to head for Inverness Museum and Art Gallery, which is close to the castle. The museum has existed for almost 150 years, starting life around a Highland and Jacobite collection, including a group of historic Stuart portraits donated by the family of Prince Frederick Duleep Singh, including a portrait of Prince Charles Edward Stuart attributed to Pompeo Batoni, and one of Cromwell that Prince Freddy, loathing Cromwell, hung upside down in the toilet at his home in Norfolk and that is now upside down in the museum! The museum has grown significantly since those early days and now covers the geology and prehistory of the Highlands, the Picts, the wildlife of the region (including several stuffed specimens of creatures that died of natural causes in the local wildlife park), and Inverness silver, Highland weapons and bagpipes (which is appropriate given the bagpipes are weapons). It was a useful couple of hours as we got to grips with more Jacobite history, which is not my area of expertise, and with the geology that confronts you at every turn as you head further north and west.

These days we’re terribly lightweight and can only really handle a couple of museums in a single day, so we figured it was time to go back to the AirBnB (Stag Head Studio) and get tidied up in time for dinner.

We headed out on foot once again, this time stopping off for a pre-dinner dram at the Malt Room, which is apparently Inverness’ first whisky bar. When in Rome, and all that. It gave us the opportunity of carrying on from the night before and trying out another Highland Park offering.

We couldn’t stop too long though. We had a dinner reservation at Rocpool (apparently named after the owner’s favourite place in Australia but without the “k”). I’m always careful when booking restaurants, because Lynne would never forgive me if I got it wrong. I hadn’t got it wrong. Rocpool was warm, welcoming, and absolutely buzzing on a Tuesday night in October, and once we started to eat I could understand why. The food was superb, beautifully presented, perfectly cooked, and locally sourced as far as possible.

We started with hand-dived west coast king scallops with baby chorizo sausages, spring onion crème fraiche
and a lemon garlic & parsley butter. Scallops are easy to mess up and I’ve had some in the past that have been frankly underwhelming, if not actually dull. These were sweet and juicy and had the perfect crisp outer edges. The spiced crab and sweetcorn soup with fresh mussels, scallops and prawns, coconut cream, fresh chilli and coriander was also a knockout. I was glad that we had, as usual, agreed to share. I was even more glad when we got to the mains. The loin of Speyside venison roasted with Parma ham and haggis, glazed baby turnips and roasted shallots with creamed parsnips and crisp fried potato was stunning, the meat tender and perfect (and the knives properly sharp), and the accompanying veggies were just right. There was no faulting the soy and ginger glazed breast of duck with risotto of wild mushrooms, roasted pak choi with crispy shallots, cashew and basil either. The kitchen absolutely knows what it’s doing and it shows.

Unable to manage a dessert, we wobbled unsteadily back to the AirBnB and were rapidly asleep.