The Daily Telegraph - Saturday
Local monks’ view on the Loch Ness Monster
SIR – I much enjoyed Alan Cochrane’s article on the Loch Ness Monster (“Nessie will show herself when it suits her – you just have to believe”, Comment, August 29).
In the early 1970s I visited a friend who was a monk at the then Fort Augustus Abbey. Famously, the abbey grounds look straight down Loch Ness. One evening at dinner I asked if there was a Loch Ness Monster, confident that from a group of monks I’d get the definitive answer. “No,” came a chorus, followed immediately by: “There must be a family of them. We have seen different ones.”
Danny Sullivan
Basingstoke, Hampshire
SIR – A project to find the Loch Ness Monster was planned in the 1980s, with international participation. The leader applied to the Royal Geographical Society for financial support. I was a member of the RGS Expeditions Committee at the time. The leader presented his plans and explained that he would use the latest sonar technology from Germany.
After he left the room the members of the committee turned to me as the presumed aquatic expert. “There is a sure way to prove if the monster exists or not,” I said. “Dam Loch Ness at both ends, divert all the streams and pump the Loch dry. That will fix it.”
The committee members stared at me in an awkward silence. I realised that the cause of their dismay was not the absurd cost and technology of my joke suggestion, but the certainty that the problem would be solved – yes or no.
The whole purpose of the Loch Ness Monster is the mystery.
Dr Nicholas Flemming
Guildford, Surrey