Sunday Times Where Was I? Holiday competition

Little bit tricky this week but near as I can figure it, the most likely answers, seem to me to be

Q1. John Cobb

Q2. The Invergarry and Fort Augustus Railway Company.

(NB for question one, Mr Cobb's full name is given as John Rhodes Cobb but it is marked as John Cobb on the memorial near Urquhart castle)


The puzzle author has upped his game this week and thrown in a bit of nacht und nebel, to make things a little more interesting. I found several hiking trails or 'ways' in the UK which are quoted at 79 miles long, some examples are the Yorkshire Wolds Way and The Dales way but I am pretty sure that the one which is pertinent to this quest, is The Great Glen Way, which shadows some of the A82, along the north western shores of Loch Ness.

From the initial clues given, the author may have visited the Divach falls near Drumnadrochit. Looking at the OS map for the area, you do have to leave the main road and use the back roads to get to the aforesaid cataract, which some sources claim is around 100 feet high (he could also have visited the Plodda falls near the village of Tomich, in glen Affric, which are said to be around the same height but they are further down the back roads from Drumnadrochit and he may not have travelled that far).

There is a memorial on the A82 around two kilometres south west of Drumnadrochit and from the pictures I have seen of it, this is dedicated not to Donald Campbell (red herring) but instead to a quieter speed record achiever called John Rhodes Cobb (born 1899), who lead a very adventurous and daring life, which was financed by his work at the family fur broking business (Anning, Chadwick and Kiver ltd). The photographs of the memorial and some of the references indicate that JRC was killed while attempting to break a water speed record, in a jet boat called 'The Crusader' on loch Ness, on the 29th September 1952. The tragedy happened close to Urquhart castle and the memorial was built near the accident site by the local villagers. Some of the witnesses claimed that the boat flipped over when it hit the wake of a plesiosaur but they may have been on the ale at the time.

A film about highwaymen starring Ned Beatty and Joe Mullaney, which was shot in the area circa 1985, was 'Restless Natives'. The film features music by one of the few great bands to emerge from that ghastly decade, namely, 'Big Country'. Continuing down the A82, brings us to the village of Invermoriston, which is where the river Moriston flows into Loch Ness. I found some references which claim it is 4 miles long but I think the people who wrote this are measuring the distance to the dam. On some of my maps, it looks more like 16 - 20 to the main lake that it sources from (Loch Cluanie).

It seems more like six miles on the map from Invermoriston to the town of Fort Augustus, though again the puzzle writer may be using the car odometer to measure the distance but there is indeed a small island, called Cherry Island and it is thought to have been a Crannog or a fortified dwelling which was built on top of wooden piles driven into the loch bed. Cherry Island is believed to be the only isle on loch Ness. A company which was incorporated in 1896 to open a railway from Fort Augustus to Spean Bridge, was The Invergarry and Fort Augustus Railway Company. The railway opened in 1903 but later went bust (not enough passengers to make it viable) and was taken over by the Highland Railway, then the North British Railway and finally the London and North British Railway, before closing c1947. 

Fort Augustus had a Benedictine abbey and the OS map and satellite pictures show there is also a lighthouse there. North east of Fort Augustus, the OS map shows the word 'Meml' near the south eastern shore of the loch in the vicinity of loch Tarff and between Glendoe lodge and Murligan hill. I have not yet located a source which explains what the memorial commemorates. (The Eastender Himself would have travelled down the south eastern shore of the loch, to see the house (Boleskin) of one of the greatest of the Yardbirds, Mr Jimmy Page (Boleskin was formerly owned by a whacky practitioner of Magicke, called Aleister Crowley))

Link to the competition:

Where Was I? Competition