COLIN CAMPBELL: Inverness Castle warm glow heralds exciting days ahead
On an icy night in early February a surprise spectacle on the riverside stopped me in my tracks.
It was the castle, which has been a scaffolded slab of darkness in recent winters, finally lit up again. Not by external floodlights, but by warm lighting from the interior, in an alluring shade of amber.
The Christmas lights in the city centre had been dismantled a month earlier. But the glow from the newly-illuminated castle was one of the most cheering and eye-catching riverside scenarios I've seen, in winter or summer.
Sign up to receive our free email newsletters
I wasn't alone in being struck by the sight either. There weren't many people about on the riverside on a freezing evening. But as I crossed the Greig Street bridge some people were leaning on the railings gazing up at the castle in admiration, like tourists in midsummer pausing to drink the view all in.
At the time I didn't know whether this switch-on - quite a big one with the impression it made - was a functional requirement for night work to continue, or if it was calculated to impress.
But since then the castle has been lit up on other nights and at weekends and the illumination has lost none of its cheering effect. It has steered me more towards believing what will emerge after work is completed there could be very special indeed.
Some of those involved in the project have already declared that the new-look castle will be a "world class" tourist attraction. That's quite a claim to make. Despite the £36 million price tag it looked unwise to wax too lyrical about the changes it would bring about, and how awesome they would be.
Don't over-hype it and risk inducing a sense of letdown, or even mild disappointment, would be sensible advice. But they may be right in their grandiose expectations.
For decades many of us have probably taken the castle for granted, acknowledging that visitors should find it impressive but having long since ceased admiring it ourselves. I still think back to the days when it was used as the town courthouse and a motley crew of weekend drunks and brawlers would converge on it to receive their Monday morning punishment. That was only a few years ago, but it now seems in the far distant past.
It's all change at the castle now.
I was won over by the sight of that amber lighting looming so splendidly over the city centre in the darkness in early February. It rekindled and enhanced my interest in what lies ahead.
The Eastgate Centre may come in for some criticism now but it was seen as the Eighth Wonder of the World arriving in Inverness when it opened four decades ago. It may be more difficult to impress people now than it was back then, but the excitement and enthusiasm for the castle reopening should match and even surpass that.
The city's premier landmark has brought an unmistakably cheering glow to the nocturnal city centre in recent months. And we eagerly await confirmation that those hailing the "world class" rebranding of the castle have indeed risen to the challenge of its historic transformation.
