Inveraray 20 October - 21 October

It's a long way to Inveraray......it's a long way to gooooooo.

It wasn't actually, which was why we stayed there for a night as a stop over for our assault on the whiskey fortress that is the Isle of Islay.

On our way we visited the Cruachan - The Hollow Mountain. This is not actually a setting for the Lord of the Rings, but is a power station.

To keep things neat and tidy they formed a cavern in the mountain and situated the turbine room in there. This required hollowing out 220,000 cubic metres of granite, and the cavern is high enough to house the Tower of London. It is also an 'on demand' power station, so they release water from the dam at the top of the mountain to produce power at peak times (i.e. when everyone gets up from TV to make a cup of tea, apparently party political broadcasts produce the highest demand), and then pump all the water back up to the dam at low demand times.

You reach it by driving along a road 1km into the heart of the mountain itself, and the whole experience is quite surreal. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take photos, so I stole some off the internet.

The road into the mountain - the tour guide kept telling us about the 'tropical microclimate' in the mountain. It's a constant 15 degrees - wheeeeeeeeee!  The tower is tunnelled through granite, which is apparently strong enough that there are NO SUPPORTS!  Eek.

The turbine room - those are actually the 'donkey engines' (starter motors) that sit on top of the turbines. Most of the cavern is underneath the floor.

Inveraray, which looks a little grim because it was raining, was actually quite pretty. It had a whole black and white motif happening. While there we visited the jail, and I had a bacon roll which only cost a 1 pound and 20p. It's the little things that make a place.

Inveraray had many of the things we look for in a town, a good cafe, some attractions, and well signposted massive carparks. I like the way that the houses are camoflagued to match the sky.

We visited the jail - while the original was pretty grim, the refurbished building was the first in the area to have gas lights and central heating. 

The death masks of Burke and Hare - the famous serial killers who would murder folk and sell the corpses for dissection. As with all valuable antiques, these were found in a cupboard during a clean out.

Jane practicing for the up-coming trial. 

A view over the 'exercise yards'

Scottish wit - the graffitti says 'one room to let' and gives the date the current inmate was leaving.

When they built the new prison, they found that conditions were actually too good and three quarters of the prisnors were reoffending immeadiatly after being released so they could go back in. So they introduced hard labour, including this machine. You would have to crank the handle around 14,000 times in a day - and the warden could adjust the difficulty with a screw (which is where the term 'screw' for a prison warder comes from). Best of all, it makes a really hideous noise. Very, very entertaining.