HOBBYCAR ON LOCH NESS.
How much do false teeth cost in Germany? I only ask because an entire coachload of Leica touting tourists, recently caught tooling, at attention, through the Scottish highlands early one May morning, badly need to know. And it’s all my fault.
I was, at the time, behind the wheel of a car, on the phone, arguing with an estate agent, 750 feet off the ground.
This potentially unnerving discrepancy between the bottom of the car and terra firma was, however, fortuitously full of Loch Ness; a 23 mile long slice of liquid Scotland the colour and temperature of iced tea. And, by a further stroke of good fortune, my transport was designed to float. Just…
Deep enough to swamp the Post Office tower (not such a bad idea), and of sufficient volume to give the planet’s entire population ten baths each (an even better idea), the Loch is renowned throughout the world as home to the most famous monster of them all: Known affectionately as ‘Nessie’ by tourists and reverentially as ‘Income’ by the local highlanders, she (it’s always she; odd that…) shuns publicity with an alacrity that makes the late Greta Garbo’s antics seem positively extrovert. Sightings often make global news, and are very, very rare. The first recorded glimpse is attributed to St. Columba in 565 AD which, if nothing else, suggests that our prehistoric pal has been benefiting from cut price public transport for quite some time now….
From the distant shore that morning, all our bolt-upright Bavarians can make out is an enthusiastically frothing dot. The result on board; instant bedlam. With a sound to topple even bagpipes off the top of the list of the world’s worst dins and a smell guaranteed to put a smile on the face of rubber fetishists everywhere, the bus pulls up. Most of those on board, however, do not; socking startled faces into a selection of grab-rails, little chromed ash trays and vomit stained velour.
The object of all this dental dismay is a Hobbycar, a £40,000 French facsimile of road going Tupperware that doubles as a barely buoyant boat. There’s only one in Britain and it belongs to the staggeringly posh Carnegie Club, a top toff’s sporting paradise situated at Skibo castle, about an hours drive north east of Inverness. Handy that; our proximity to Loch Ness offers an irresistible opportunity to put the car through it’s aquatic paces, and indulge in a little light monster spotting to boot.
Measured by degrees of difficulty, making love standing up in a hammock comes a very poor second to driving the 23 miles along the north shore of Loch Ness without once gazing waterwards. Indeed, no one ever looks anywhere else, and the entire stretch of road is one long Accident Black Hump. Countless signs in every conceivable language, urging visitors to drive on the left, are about as much use as a chocolate fireguard, and panel-beating provides a healthy secondary source of local income. The safest place, then, to be not looking where you’re going, is on the loch itself.
The Hobbycar is powered by a 92bhp, 1905cc, Peugeot turbodiesel mounted transversely, bang in the middle of its bulbous blue body. For road going purposes, it sports permanent four wheel drive through a five speed gearbox, with disc brakes all round and Citroen’s adjustable height, hydropneumatic suspension. Afloat, hopelessly thrashing road wheels are not asked to do the impossible and propulsion is courtesy of twin water jets powered by the same diesel unit.
Loch Ness cuts up pretty rough most days and, for reasons I rapidly came to understand, I was advised to get afloat early whilst it was still calm. Launching the Hobbycar is a doddle. Simply find yourself a gently sloping, bather free beach or slipway, crank up the suspension to its highest setting for hidden rock clearance, and charge merrily into the wet bit. As soon as the wheels leave the ground, knock it into neutral, press one button on the dash to start the water jets, another to fire up the bilge pump and off you, more or less, go.
Once afloat, lift the wheels tight to the underside of the car to reduce drag, and centre the steering wheel. This, it transpires, is important. Steering involves directing the jets via a toothpick sized joystick behind the gear lever, and the steering wheel itself is redundant. But, if the wheels are off line, the requisite direction towards is instantly replaced by a series of meandering, involuntary doughnuts. Power is applied by the accelerator pedal, and aquatic top whack is quoted at a spanking 5 knots. The Hobbycar brochure mysteriously informed me that I must fly a green flag whilst bobbing about. In the absence of said item, I settle for signalling my presence to other shipping with violent shivering, visible from a great distance, and the warning glow of a lit fag.
Centred wheel or not, steering is a haphazard affair. A series of directional suggestions via the joystick is the best you can hope for, and the car consistently putters about the loch in a sequence of stubborn, right angled turns as if following the lanes of some invisible waterborne maze of its own imagination. Attempts to go faster produce bags of noise, no more speed, huge gouts of froth at the back end and an even tougher time at the helm. So water skiing is right out.
Aficionados of the Amphicar, that famed Triumph Herald with bows of the sixties, will remember that, although ultimately prone to sudden submersible activities, the car rode fairly high in the water. By contrast, the Hobbycar, although reputed to be unsinkable, boasts all the freeboard of a well dunked Ginger Nut.
By only 9 o’clock, the wind has whipped the surface of the loch into a vicious swell of malevolent, six inch ripples, each one single mindedly targeted on my trousers. The Hobbycar has an electric, height adjustable windscreen amongst its arsenal of toys: Designed to be lowered for boating and flies-on-the-teeth motoring, it affords some protection if you’re butting, head on, into such mountainous waves. But from side on, there’s nothing between you and hugely invigorating dollops of spanner cold water (tightens the nuts…) except almost no reassuring millimetres of blue fibreglass. How the car’s engine avoids flooding is beyond me, and a feat I could not replicate. I was soon squelchy and, shortly thereafter, with the passing of a cheery, dry boatload of sinister shape spotters, properly drenched.
Leaving the water, bilge pump working overtime and not a moment too soon, is simply a matter of reversing the launch process. Wait ’til you feel the ground under the wheels, knock the car into gear and, switching off jets and pump, rise dripping from the depths, like a giant Portuguese-Man-of-War jellyfish on its way to the shops.
Since ‘Nessie’ is clearly not yet up, dressed and done with her Soggy Nut Cornflakes, further aquatic adventure is pointless, at best foolhardy and, at worst, lethal. So, by way of a road test, with the rain setting in and no available hood whatsoever, we set off in search of that scant handful of locals who have, at some stage in their lives, actually caught a glimpse of our elusive prey.
“It’s like trying to describe a tomato to a blind man” explains 73 year old, ex-CID inspector Ian Cameron. “I would have extreme difficulty offering a comparison to what I saw.” On 15th of June 1965, he was enjoying a balmy evening’s fishing when: “I saw…. something… surface. And I realised that this was a lot more than a fish. The visible part would be about 25-30ft long, standing 4-5ft out of the water and tapering down to nothing. The interesting thing was that it looked as if it was rotating… I shouted to my friend Willy Fraser fishing nearby (he had a sighting the previous year which, frankly, I took with a pinch of salt) and we watched it coming towards us together. We were certain it would come ashore; but no…”
“And this is what convinced us it had some power source” he continues. “A bunch of feathers, or the Queen Mary without engines, would be blown by the wind. But, whatever this object was, about 300 yards offshore it began to tack away into the wind.” Mr Cameron and chum ran up the bank, drove to the next lay-by and continued, with seven others, to watch ‘it’ pottering about for the best part of an hour before it finally dissapeared. “To this day, I don’t know what I saw” admits Mr. Cameron. “If anything, it looked like the arse-end of a giant hippopotamus. And, though I have no evidence to support this, I still feel that, if I touched it, It would be soft…. I’ve no intention of trying to convince anybody” he concludes. “All I do is approach it from a legal standpoint: We’ve got the time, location, and nine independent eye-witnesses. In a murder case, that would once have been enough evidence, beyond a reasonable doubt, to send a man to the gallows…”
I hastily offer Ian Cameron a thank you trip round the bay aboard the Hobbycar, but he declines vehemently: “I’ve not been out on that Loch in thirty years, and I’m not about to do so now…”
On the road once more, damp trousered, wet in the wallet and with serious reservations as to the abilities of the Hobbycar as a boat, we try it, somewhat nervously, as a car. Reassuringly, it looks far more like a car on the road than it does a boat on the water. There are four seats, the backs of which fold flat to keep out the worst of the weather, or water, when not in use. In the case of the front seats, the steering wheel and dashboard to one side, and the glove box on the other, fold down neatly under the seat backs which extend automatically when lowered, to close all gaps. Behind the engine, rear seats are reversible for increased monster spotting potential.
Although a mechanical PSV parts bin, the bodywork is all Hobbycar’s own work, with the possible exception of a rear reflector strip and tail lights that are suspiciously reminiscent of the Alfa 164. Instrumentation and controls are basic, but include a natty, pop up, dash mounted radio, a soggy cigarette lighter, electric mirrors, which don’t work, and all the normal road car switchgear, which doesn’t work. The problem is that on contact with water, all the fuses instantly blow. Happily, Inverness has a Peugeot dealership, but with fuses at £13 a throw, hand signals are not a problem. The most extravagant touch takes the form of four stainless steel rings set into the corners of the ‘deck’; for hanging the rich man’s accessory from the davits of the rich man’s yacht, of course… Over the side, up the beach and there you have it; shopping.
The Hobbycar turns out to be an absolute hoot to drive. The driving position is not adjustable in any way, seats are rock hard, and there’s precious little room for your feet in the well. But it’s no toy; it blats about with gusto, and sufficient courage will unearth a top speed of 93mph. The turbodiesel gives encouraging acceleration; other road users cease tittering the instant you overtake. Ride is firm but remarkably supple and handling, through stiff but accurate power assisted steering far better than I had believed possible. The whole thing is fantastically rigid and well screwed together too; no rattles or clanks, even over rough ground, and absolutely no scuttle shake whatsoever. Best of all, the car goes one better than a cabriolet; with the windscreen down (to clear the build up of diesel fumes), it’s the closest you’ll come these days to the feeling of riding a ‘bike without a crash helmet.
Further amphibious sleuthing unearths two others who have seen something they can’t explain going about it’s business in the loch: Dorothy Dunn recounted her sighting, in June 1983, of what looked like an upturned boat, and gave us an excellent recipe for yoghurt cake. Ronnie Mackintosh (“Will ye not come in for a wee dram?” “Oh all right then…”) also has a tale to tell: “I was 14 years old, sitting in the front seat of my brother’s Wolsley. There was a huge commotion in the middle of the loch, and this vast, brownish black apparition rolled over in the centre of the loch. It was visible for some time, then sank slowly out of sight. The waves it left were about three feet high, and went right out to both sides of the loch. It was about the size of a double-decker bus and I still think, to this day, hand on heart, I saw the Loch Ness monster. I hadn’t just walked out of the Drumnadrochit hotel either, I was too young for that…..”
Speaking of buses, ownership of a double-decker comes a very close second to catching a glimpse of the monster on the Christmas present list of Stephen Feltham. He’s been camped out beside the loch, living in a converted library van, without so much as a suspicious looking, semi-submerged log to his name, for over three years. Three or four possible locations are suggested for the whereabouts of the most dedicated and least lucky monster hunter in the business, and we set off for the south side of the loch.
Travelling around the loch, via Inverness, the Hobbycar attracts the sort of attention usually reserved, in Scotland, for a loose £50 note blowing down the pavement. Cheery greetings punctuate our progress: “Hey Jessie (derogatory), has that thing got propellers or what…?” In the land where the 2.8 injection Capri is still king, the car elicits universally gobsmacked gazes, but “What’s it for?” is the most popular question we field, and the hardest to answer.
We find Mr. Feltham, bedeck-chaired, video camera poised, on a small beach beside a large pub. He is putting the finishing touches to the days selection of clay monsters, which he sells in order to afford some of life’s little luxuries. Like soap. Cough.
With the waves now smashing ashore a daunting 9 inches high, it is far too rough for any more poorly aimed floating, so we repair to the pub for further research. Stephen’s love affair with the Loch started when, as a 7 year old on holiday, he came across a group of monster hunters. He was instantly hooked and, for years thereafter, spent every available moment tearing up to Scotland and peering at the water.
“It reached the point where going home just depressed me” recalls Stephen. “So I decided to sell up and get fully involved in the mystery up here. My girl friend wasn’t too impressed, we’d been together for 7 years.” “Why didn’t she come with you?” I enquire. “That” he mutters, “wasn’t really an option….”
Moving swiftly on, I ask him what he plans if (“When” he interrupts) he ever gets a sighting. “It’s a simple stepladder” he explains: “Get a sighting of whatever’s in here, sell that piece of film to sponsor the next 10 years, and so on. Get better equipment, a boat, a double-decker bus….” “A Hobbycar?” I suggest. “Er, not really…” he feels. Stephen claims to enjoy the simple life beside the loch, but some of the less charitable locals suspect he’s rarely to be found at home on cold winter evenings, a string of young ladies dotted round the loch providing assorted alternative creature comforts…
In Drumnadrochit, half way along the loch’s northern shore, we find The Official Loch Ness Monster Exhibition (an empty single malt bottle’s throw from The Original Loch Ness Monster Exhibition), home of naturalist Adrian Shine. He’s been in residence for as long as anyone can remember, but still hasn’t seen a sausage. He furnishes us with a brief chronology.
“The monster has been a local tradition since an 1868 article in the Inverness Courier referred to a huge fish” Adrian explains. “But in 1933 Mr. and Mrs. Spicer turned the whole thing into Jurassic Park with their sighting of a writhing, long necked shape crossing the hot tarmac road ahead of them.” A mirage springs to mind… But nonetheless, overnight, ‘Nessie’ developed a fashionably long neck and talk of a prehistoric plesiosaur was rife.
It all got a bit silly then: In 1936 the surgeon Robert Wilson took a famous photo of a plasticine head stuck on a toy submarine. Years before it was exposed as a fake, the guilt ridden Wilson had already fled the country, never to return. At one point a big-game hunter was called in; but the best he could come up with were the footprints of a stuffed hippopotamus foot umbrella stand.
A series of wildly differing photos appeared over the next few years and, more recently, miniature submarines were to be found biffing about in the depths taking encouraging snapshots of old logs.
Mr. Shine believes in the appliance of science to solve the mystery, and in October 1987 lined up twenty boats to give the whole loch a good sonar lashing. Moving echoes they did find, but nothing of true ‘Nessie’ proportions. This all adds weight to the argument that there aren’t enough fish in the loch to provide adequate monster munch for one, let alone several, beasties.
So, what are we left with? “Though I’m not suggesting that it accounts for all monster sightings” says Mr. Shine, careful not to slay the goose that lays the golden eggs, “I subscribe to the view that a single unusual specimen had come into the loch from the sea. The largest fish you’d see in fresh water evolved during the Jurassic period, grows to 3 meters long and is of primitive reptilian appearance… it’s a sturgeon.”
Oh dear. Nothing but a ruddy great fish after all… Still no one who has actually seen ‘Nessie’ subscribes to this theory and, such is the allure of the mystery, no one else really wants it to be true anyway.
Outside, dozens of goggle eyed tourists shun entry to the exhibition and flock round the Hobbycar asking all manner of tricky technical questions such as: “What’s it for?” And as we reluctantly belt back along the loch to return the car, gazes fixed on the water, the answer comes to me: If you’re rich enough to have £40,000 in loose change, if the sun is shining, the water is flat calm and there are no other boats within a comfortable half mile radius, the Hobbycar is the best motorised monster spotter in the business.