The possibility that Historic Scotland will become a direct competitor in the ‘Nessie market’ appears to offend the Drumnadrochans more than its announced aim of promoting only the castle. Shine heads the Loch Ness Project, ‘a scientific exercise concerned with the exploration of Loch Ness in all its natural aspects. This includes its natural history, biology, geology.’ Over breakfast in The Official Loch Ness Exhibition and Hotel café he said, ‘Historic Scotland were very happy to link their destiny with the Loch Ness exploration.’

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Shine claims Historic Scotland intended the new centre to be a home for ‘Project Urquhart’, a scheme headed by a UK journalist who wrote a book about Nessie. ‘The Project’s intent appears to be the promotion of the myth,’ says Shine. ‘Historic Scotland had said that all their interpretation was to be restricted solely to the castle. They said this at least twice at public meetings and then had to admit that they were actually hosting Project Urquhart. Historic Scotland has now given me a cast-iron guarantee, again in public, that they are not going to include the Loch Ness theme.’

’Because you now have to pay money to stop there,’ Shine continued, ‘you have to stay longer in order to go down to the castle. Previously, most people only took in the view or snapped a few snapshots. Clearly the castle has its part to play in the local situation, and the local people have always recognized that, but it only became popular as a place for tourists to stop when they built a car-park. It never had any great prominence before that.’

Robert J McIlwraith, Historic Scotland’s North Regional Director of Properties, denies having any hidden motives. ‘Our plans for the castle are truly all about servicing it. At the moment we have very basic, very rudimentary facilities,’ he told me as we walked down the footpath towards the castle.

’We have here an international site; not one that’s just important to Drumnadrochit. It’s much more than that, it’s important in terms of Highland tourism and Scottish tourism. It’s the third most-visited ancient monument in Scotland, the other two being Edinburgh Castle and Stirling Castle. Historic Scotland has invested heavily in both of those and continues to do so. Yet here, we have the major monument in the north of Scotland, relatively untouched.

’We’re now in the fortunate position of having secured the backing of Historic Scotland to put in major improvements here to visitor facilities,’ he continues, taking a seat on one of the shaded park benches along the pathway ’so we can provide the kind of welcome we want to give the visitors. We get visitors from all over the world, they come to the third most important site in Scotland and what do they get? They get a car park that’s too small and so more than likely they’re going to be waved on because it’s full. Tour buses can’t get in because it’s choked solid. Many people arrive here and are bitterly disappointed because they can’t get into the facility. For those people who do get here, what have they got? Rudimentary facilities; the interpretation of the castle is small scale.’

McIlwraith described what the plan will offer. ‘The new centre will have space set aside for educational visits; for example, an audiovisual display. Right now we don’t even have a television set. It will be built around the history of the castle–its importance in the Great Glen, its strategic importance, and the life and times of the people here. We want to explain to visitors how these people lived and one way to do that is through a good audio-visual experience, which can even be linked into school curriculums.

’We’re very conscious of the fact that we need to build underground as much as possible, so we don’t impact the landscape. It’s been a great problem for us.’

The £2.5 million scheme ‘certainly won’t be a Disneyland-type theme park,’ McIlwraith assured me. ‘There’s no question of that. That’s absolutely the last thing we would become involved in.’

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