The most Googled questions about Loch Ness

This post is part of a series of “Ask Google? Ask Fairlie!” posts. Today, I’m asking Google about Loch Ness. Using the auto-complete suggestions, and ‘People also ask’ features of Google, I find out some of the most Googled questions about Loch Ness. Then I answer those questions myself uncovering quirky facts about Loch Ness. Who needs Google when you can ask Fairlie?

Is Loch Ness a lake?

It’s been a while since I’ve taken on an ‘Ask Google? Ask Fairlie!‘ challenge, so let’s get started with a really easy one. Yes indeed-y, Loch Ness is a ‘lake’.

I grew up in a bilingual household. As the Australian child of Scottish parents, I speak English fluently, and have a good understanding of Scots. 🙂 So this stands me in good stead for deciphering Scottish place names. The word loch is the Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Scots word for a lake or for a sea inlet. So, while a ‘lake’ in English is just a freshwater body of water, a ‘loch’ can be a lake and/or something like an estuary/fjord/firth/strait etc. There is only one body of water in the whole of Scotland that is officially called Lake (rather than Loch) and that is the Lake of Menteith near Stirling. No-one seems to know exactly why this one loch gets the ‘lake’ moniker.

But back to the original question… Yes, Loch Ness is a ‘lake’ – one which holds the largest volume of fresh water in Great Britain.

Is Loch Ness the deepest lake in the world?

Loch Ness is deep. Very, VERY deep. The official depth is 229.8m (754ft), but in 2016, a tour boat operator using sonar equipment found a new deeper spot of 270.9m (889ft) adding another 40m for the monster, Nessie to hide away in. Whichever way you cut it…that’s a looooooooong way down to the loch-floor.

To put that into context, almost every one of London’s tallest buildings would be underwater if they stood at the deepest point. The exception is The Shard, which at 310 metres (1,020 ft) would poke above the surface.

However, despite having these incredible depths on its resume, Loch Ness isn’t even the deepest loch in Scotland, let alone the world. The deepest loch in Scotland is Loch Morar, which at 310 m (1,017 ft) would just drown The Shard.

The world deepest lake title winner is actually Lake Baikal in southern Russia. It weighs in at a whopping estimated 1,642m (5,387 ft) deep with its bottom approximately 3,893 feet (1,187 meters) below sea level.

Is it worth going to Loch Ness?

Oh, I love these open-ended questions which folks throw out to the Google world while planning their travel itineraries! So, what do I think? Was our overnight detour to the pretty town of Drumnadrochit on the shores of Loch Ness worth it?

Loch Ness is certainly one of the best-known sights in Scotland. Since the first modern ‘monster’ sighting in 1933, the myth has taken on a life of its own. With a gazillion references in popular culture, and enough new ‘sightings’ over the years since 1933 to keep the myth alive, there would hardly be a visitor to Scotland who hasn’t heard of Loch Ness. So it’s definitely on the ‘must-see check-list’ of many Scottish itinerary plans.

But what do you actually get? You certainly don’t get any guaranteed monster sightings. The Official Loch Ness Sightings Register reports that there has been a record number of sightings in 2019 – a grand total of 17 so far this year. It’s estimated that around 2 million people visit Loch Ness each year – so that’s not a great strike rate!

What you do get is picturesque Loch scenery, and a big dose of the Nessie Phenomenon. We visited the Loch Ness Centre and Exhibition in Drumnadrochit, which provided a fascinating overview of the history of Loch Ness from the ice age to present day and explained some of the investigations that have taken place over many years in an endeavour to uncover the mystery of the monster. With a ‘scientific’ approach, the Centre explores some of the hoaxes, the unexplained, and the persistent rumours about what may or may not live in the depths of the Loch. Plus, of course there is a well-stocked gift shop. If you’re so inclined, there is a variety of boat cruises out on the Loch itself. But that really didn’t appeal to us.

To be honest, what puts Loch Ness on the map is the myth of the monster, and to appreciate that you have to love a degree of kitsch, mixed with a whole lot of make-believe, and a bucket-load of the unexplained.

I love the quirky and the kitsch. So Loch Ness was right up my alley. I thought our overnight visit was worth it. But your mileage may vary.

Quirky fun fact – when you go into Street View in Google Maps around the Loch, the usual yellow man you use to navigate the map becomes a green monster which you can even take out onto the loch itself to search for Nessie from the Google Maps boat. Go try it! I’ll wait…

Is Loch Ness a man-made lake?

If Loch Ness was man-made, it would be an incredible feat of engineering. No, it is not man-made. The Loch was formed approximately 10,000 years ago, towards the end of the last Ice Age, when a huge glacier that had scraped its way along what is now known as The Great Glen melted. (Glen in Scots = deep highland valley).

However, here’s an interesting little tidbit…

Loch Ness has just one island – Cherry Island – which is a ‘crannog’ – a form of partially or totally artificial island. Most crannogs in Scotland and Ireland were constructed during the Iron Age as a form of ancient loch-dwelling. Rocks were piled up onto the loch bed to make an island to hold a stone house. Nowadays most crannogs appear as tree-covered islands or remain hidden as submerged stony mounds. So, while Loch Ness isn’t man-made, its only island is.

How long does it take to walk around Loch Ness?

Strap on your hiking boots folks, we’re in for a bit of a journey…you’ll need more than a packed lunch and compass to do this circuit.

There is a Loch Ness 360° Trail which is a 130 km (81 mile) walking or cycling trail combining the South Loch Ness Trail with a part of the Great Glen Way to create a circular route around Loch Ness. The circular trail begins and ends in Inverness and is split into six sections which pass through Aldourie, Dores, Foyers, Fort Augustus, and Drumnadrochit while skirting around the shores of the Loch.

To do the full route would take around 4-7 days, depending on how much you’re prepared to walk in a day and how many overnight stops you want to make. If it was me, I’d take 7 days, stopping at least overnight at the end of each section. There’s a number of travel companies offering to arrange the accommodation, and transport of your luggage door-to-door between towns, allowing you just to head off with a day pack each day.

Can Loch Ness be drained?

Interesting question.

I’m guessing that the logic behind Googlers asking this question is that if the Loch was drained, we’d quickly uncover whether Nessie was lurking in its depths.

I’m no water engineer, but what I do know is that the cubic volume of water held in Loch Ness is estimated to be 7.4 billion cubic metres (263 billion cubic feet) which is more than all the water in all the lakes, rivers and reservoirs in the whole of England and Wales combined. The entire population of the world could fit into that volume of water more than ten times over. So, in my inexpert opinion, that seems like a heck of a lot of water to have to pump out. And where would it go?

Let’s just leave the water undrained now shall we?