The day started out stellar. In fact, pretty near close to perfect. We mentioned we had met Willie at the pub last night. “Ask for Willie the Rat, they’ll know where to find me.”
We travelled the five miles down the road to the Clansman Hotel and within minutes we were sitting there with Willie, our mouths hanging open, hardly believing what we were hearing.
Willie is a born storyteller and he told us the story of his father Ian who had seen something “most peculiar” one day in June, 1965 while fishing the loch with his buddy. Willie described the details of what his father saw that day. They didn’t call it a monster, but they knew it was something that travelled against the current. It either had to have a motor, or it was some type of animal.
According to Willie, his Dad and several other independent witnesses saw ‘something’ in the water that day. They all watched it for over fifty minutes.
When Ian’s story went public, he didn’t speak of it for a very long time. As you can imagine, the ridicule would soon follow after a report of seeing something out of the ordinary, especially for a local policeman in the 60s.
We were so wrapped up in Willy’s story that we ran out of time to photograph him, but we’ll try again tomorrow.
The rest of our day was spent much like the others: searching for the Nessie researcher from Dores. He’s proving to be as elusive as the monster. However, we did hear a story from a local about how Steve had somehow managed to put a piano in his tiny trailer with a custom built add-on. The funny part is that he doesn’t even play piano. We can’t wait to meet him.
The local with the piano story was a genuine guy named Ronnie. A few seconds after meeting him, we were in his car travelling the narrow roads in the area on a personal tour. First, he took us to a tucked away castle in the woods, and then way up in the Highlands to marvel at a stunning view of the Loch, which was encased by a seamless backdrop of mountain and cloud. The stories flowed and we learned tons of the local history.
After a quick bite of lunch at the Dores Inn, we made our way around the south end of the loch to meet up with Malcolm who we promised to photograph yesterday. We keep our word, shared a pint and drove back to Fiddler’s (our Scotland office).
We’ve given Terri a bit of a break from writing today as she, along with us, is still absorbing all that Willie the Rat had told us. Hopefully tomorrow we’ll meet up again and perhaps he can send us in the next direction.
Today, we met a believer and he’s starting to make believers out of us too. Whisky tasting to commence soon… we’re exploring our way across the whisky map. The green dots on the map are the ones we’ve tried so far.
