Loch Ness
Loch Ness holds more fresh water than every lake in England and Wales put together, and its famous resident may be a very large eel.
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Quick Facts
- Location
- Great Glen, Scottish Highlands, running south-west from Inverness
- Length
- About 23 miles (37 km), and up to about 1.7 miles (2.7 km) wide
- Maximum depth
- About 226 metres (741 ft), deeper than the North Sea's average depth and a long way down for a freshwater lake
- Water volume
- Around 7.4 cubic kilometres, the largest volume of any lake in Britain
- Canal link
- Part of the Caledonian Canal, designed by Thomas Telford and opened in 1822
- First 'monster' record
- A beast in the River Ness, described in Adomnán's Life of St Columba (c. AD 700)
- Modern legend begins
- 1933, after a newspaper report in the Inverness Courier
- Landmark on the shore
- Urquhart Castle, near Drumnadrochit
The loch that out-measures England and Wales
Loch Ness is not the longest or the biggest in surface area in Scotland, but it wins on sheer volume. Its water, about 7.4 cubic kilometres of it, outweighs every lake in England and Wales combined. That is down to depth. The loch sits in the Great Glen, a gash in the land that follows a geological fault, and its steep sides plunge to about 226 metres. That is not far short of the Shard's 310 metres: stand London's tallest building on the loch bed and its top would poke out roughly 84 metres above the surface. Only Loch Morar is deeper in Britain. All that water holds heat remarkably well, which is why Loch Ness almost never freezes, even in hard winters. The peat washed down from the hills stains it the colour of strong tea, and you can see barely a few metres below the surface.
A monster before there was a Nessie
The oldest story is older than you might guess. Adomnán, writing his Life of St Columba around AD 700, tells how the saint came upon locals burying a man killed by a water beast in the River Ness in the sixth century. Columba is said to have ordered the creature back, and it obeyed. Notice the detail: the beast was in the river, not the loch. Then the story went quiet for more than a thousand years. It woke up in 1933. The road along the north shore had just been widened and improved, opening up fresh views of the water. On 2 May the Inverness Courier reported that a local couple had seen something large churning the surface. The paper's correspondent, water bailiff Alex Campbell, used the word 'monster', and the national press piled in.
The photo that fooled the world
The best-known image of all, the 'Surgeon's Photograph', appeared in the Daily Mail in April 1934. It shows a long neck and small head rising from the water, and for sixty years it was the monster's calling card. In 1994 it was exposed as a hoax. The 'monster' was a toy submarine fitted with a sculpted head and neck. Big-game hunter Marmaduke Wetherell, who had earlier been hired by the Daily Mail to hunt the beast and found hippo footprints that turned out to be faked, was among those behind it. Meanwhile, sightings, sonar sweeps and films, including Tim Dinsdale's footage from 1960, kept the mystery alive without ever producing a body.
What the science says
In 2018 a team led by Neil Gemmell of the University of Otago sampled the loch's water for environmental DNA. They found no sign of any reptile, and no sign of a prehistoric giant. They did find an astonishing amount of eel DNA. That has left the giant eel as one popular explanation, though the survey did not prove one existed. Other theories include waves, floating logs, swimming deer and plain wishful thinking. Long-time hunters have kept watch all the same. Steve Feltham has lived on the shore at Dores since 1991, scanning the water for Nessie.
Castles, canals and a record attempt gone wrong
Urquhart Castle, on a headland above the water near Drumnadrochit, dates mostly from the 13th century onward. Its garrison blew up part of it in 1692 to stop Jacobite forces using it. The ruins are now among the most photographed in Scotland. Loch Ness also forms the middle of the Caledonian Canal, which Thomas Telford designed to let ships cross Scotland without sailing round the north. Only about a third of its 60 miles is man-made, since the lochs do the rest. It opened in 1822, and the flight of locks at Fort Augustus, at the loch's southern end, is a satisfying sight. In 1952 the loch saw tragedy. John Cobb, attempting the water speed record in his jet-powered boat Crusader, was killed at more than 200 mph when it broke up on the surface. A memorial cairn stands on the north shore near Glenurquhart.
What to look out for when you're there
The A82 hugs the north shore and has the big viewpoints, plus the exhibitions in Drumnadrochit. The quieter south shore road climbs through forest to the Falls of Foyers. Boleskine House, once owned by occultist Aleister Crowley, stands near there. A boat trip lets you feel the scale of the place, and many carry sonar so you can watch the loch floor drop away beneath you. Bring a camera, but don't count on a monster. Count on mist, shifting light on the dark water and Highland hills reflected in it, which is spectacle enough.
Notable people
- St Columba
- Adomnán
- Alex Campbell
- Marmaduke Wetherell
- Thomas Telford
- John Cobb
- Tim Dinsdale
- Neil Gemmell
- Steve Feltham
- Aleister Crowley
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