Loch Ness

Loch Ness maintains a constant temperature of 4'C which means that it's frickin' freezin' but during the middle of winter steams because it's warmer than the land. It also has visibility limited to a depth of ten feet due to the high peat content. Dave was willing to swear black and blue that Nessie was a dinosaur and living in the subteranean caves. Loch Ness is absolutely gorgeous with mirrord waters that ripple like liquid silk. Note that Haggis is more than willing to assist lucky couples in proposing up there (and what kind of shmuck proposes in person by letter? there's a long Haggis story there).

Haggis tradition involves lining everyone up along the shore and doing the famous Nessie summoning chant complete with hand gestures. "Come to me! Come to me! Nessie, Nessie..." is the start and sounds suspiciously like Ka Mate, Ka mate... I was ready to crack up and a few of the Aussies were cracking grins too.

The other surprise of the morning was McDonald and one of the other Aussies stripping their gear off and diving into the water clad in nothing warmer than board shorts. They managed to avoid emitting girly yelps but did dwim back to shore very, very quickly....