Loch Ness EnglezIn the North of Scotland, not far from the city of Inverness, lies the famous Loch Ness. In the Scottish dialect, loch means lake. The lake offers a spectacular landscape, in a glacier cirque, 10,000 years old, having its origins in the Ice Age. Loch Ness has a length of 37 km, with an average depth of 130 m, and the maximum depth is 230 m but it is very narrow, merely 1.6 km. The lake seems to be the greatest one in England, having a volume of water equivalent of all lakes in England and Wales. Beyond the spectacular landscape, the celebrity of Loch Ness is due to the legend according to which, in its depths there is hidden a mysterious aquatic creature, a huge one, known as The Monster of Loch Ness.

The modern legend was born in 1933 when the Spicer family observed, near the lake, a creature measuring about 9 m length, looking like a dinosaurs species. After the foot imprints on the bank had been recorded, they were sent to the British Natural Science Museum, which concluded that they belonged to a hippopotamus. Evidences about the existence of Nessie, the nickname of The Monster of Loch Ness are based only on few oral testimonies, some photos (some of them even fake) and underwater recordings of the sonar equipment but without discovering any skeleton, remains of tissues or living creatures to certify the existence of the aquatic monster. In 1960, university studies detect with the help of the sonar, several huge moving bodies, which were recorded without any explanation, and in 1975 the Academy of Applied Sciences from Boston, combining the underwater photography with the sonar investigations took a photo, which caught a huge fin possibly belonging to a plesiosaurus. Although there is a consensus on the idea that The Monster of Loch Ness is a plesiosaurus, yet an insurmountable question is pending: How did Nessie survive during the Ice Age, supposing that this huge reptile had cold blood, in the absence of other creature of this species to mate with?Although the modern legend and the monster made Loch Ness famous around the world, there are testimonies about them since the beginnings of Medieval Age, when Saint Columban, a monk who went in the Scottish mountains to spread Christianity, got to the banks of the lake, and witnessed a burial. When the saint asked about the cause of death, people blamed on the creature in the lake. Then, Columban asked to be taken to the bank of the lake, and when the monster came out of the water, the monk, rising his hands, said in a loud voice: Hell creature get out of my sight! and the beast disappeared in the deep water of the lake. Sir Walter Scott in his diary, also tells about hunting a huge sea cow. Myth or reality, The Monster of Loch Ness heats the imagination of sensational news eaters around the world being a gold mine for the tourism in the area.At 2 miles from Drumnadrochit, and at 15 miles from Inverness, on the bank of Loch Ness, there is Urquhart Castle, one of the greatest castles in Scotland, built up on a promontory, which enters the waters of Loch Ness. In its existence of 700 years as medieval fortress, the castle was occupied by England under king Edward I, and conquered again, under the reign of Robert of Bruce, declared king of Scotland, and during 15th 16th centuries, the castle faced the siege of Lord Mac Donald of Isles. The castle was destroyed in 1692 during the battle between the Williamites and the Jacobites, nowadays having the aspect of a mysterious ruin, which offers a large landscape of the surroundings and the lake.Not far from Loch Ness, there is as well the famous Culloden battlefield, where in 1746 the Scottish army (the Jacobites) fought against the English one for succession at the throne of England. The celebrity of Culloden battlefield and of the battle, which took place here, consists in the fact that the battle took about an hour, the Jacobite army being massacred with guns by the Cumberland Duke nicknamed The Butcher.The mystery of Loch Ness monster is still waiting to be solved and the quiet ruins of Urquhart castle watch over the high bank, under the history and the legends of these places.