Peter Ross: A monster of an obsession on the banks of Loch Ness

Published on Saturday 5 April 2008 19:47

IT'S a heavenly day in the Highlands, the strong afternoon sun bouncing off the blackness of Loch Ness like arc lights off an eight-ball.

In Inverness, preparations are under way for a public appearance by the famous scientist and atheist Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion. Six miles out of town, in the village of Dores, there lives a man who is, in some ways, the anti-Dawkins. He is a true believer, a defender of faith, though what he believes in is not some deity above but rather the beast below. Steve Feltham has dedicated his life to finding the Loch Ness Monster.

"Hello, come on in," he says with a handshake, ducking through the door of the van which has been his home since he moved here from Dorset in 1991. Inside it's cosy, thanks to a wood-burning stove, but cramped, which is in direct contrast with the widescreen vista outside. Feltham is parked right on the southern shore. Mountains glower down from across the loch, and in the distance sunlight glitters on coaches parked by Urquhart Castle.

The van has been on this spot since failing its MOT a decade ago. It was once a mobile library, though I doubt it offered many of the books now on the shelves – David Icke's Love Changes Everything, Big Foot by John Napier, and The Search For Morag, which is about the monster of that name reputed to reside in Loch Morar.

Feltham is 45, with silver hair, a weather-beaten face and a woolly jumper so thick Harriet Harman could borrow it to walk around in Peckham. He was 28 when he dropped out of society and went "feral". He quit his well-paid job installing burglar alarms, left his partner of seven years and sold the house they shared. "I wasn't content with the idea of settling down into normality and mediocrity," he explains.

What was his girlfriend's reaction? It can't be pleasant to be chucked in favour of Nessie. "Uh, she was a bit shocked. We haven't had contact since."

Doesn't he have any regrets, though, about the life he has missed? He could have a family of his own by now. "Oh, Jesus, no!" he recoils, horrified. "I have absolutely no urge for children whatsoever. In fact, that was possibly a driving force in this. I asked: 'Right, which way shall I go? Kids or Loch Ness?' It was an easy decision: 'Give me Loch Ness!'"

While we talk, Feltham rolls green modelling clay into sausage shapes between his palms. He is making the latest batch of model Nessies, which he mounts on rocks gathered from the shore and sells to tourists. This is his only source of income. He doesn't collect unemployment benefit. He isn't actively seeking work, so wouldn't be entitled. "I don't want a job. I've got one here, doing this."

He seems to live in quite a hand-to-mouth way, using the toilet in the local pub, and washing either with a saucepan or, if the weather is warm enough, in the loch itself. He has no electricity supply, but powers a laptop, mobile phone and digital radio via a car battery running on solar power. In the winter, when there isn't much sun, and the temperature has been known to get down to minus 17C, he relies on candles and coories close to the stove. A bathtub is the one aspect of regular society that he truly misses. For company he has a girlfriend and a cat.

Feltham's fascination with the Loch Ness Monster began on a childhood holiday in 1970. From a big pile of papers, he digs out the Nessie information booklet his father bought him during that trip. He was hooked straight away, and in the years that followed, read everything he could on the subject. His ambition now is to spot or preferably film the creature, and thus add his name to the body of evidence for posterity. If he did film Nessie he would retain the copyright and use the footage to make enough money to buy a converted fishing trawler complete with echo-sounding equipment, which would give him the chance of a closer encounter.

But what does he think Nessie actually is? "Increasingly," he muses, "I think we might be looking for a kind of catfish."

Feltham is the only monster hunter based at Loch Ness all year round. The others tend to come for a fortnight at a time during the warmer months, and they all get together and air their various theories.

"People are looking for all sorts of things," says Feltham. "Some believe sturgeon are the answer, others that plesiosaurs are still the explanation. There's at least one or two people who say that beings from another planet are living on the bottom of the loch. There's this other guy who believes there's a rip in time and we are getting glimpses of things from the past."

Compared with that lot, Feltham's theory seems rather tame. "Yes, but whatever the truth, I'm willing to film that. If a plesiosaur pops up, I'm not going to say: 'Nah, I'm holding out for a catfish.'"

Feltham does get disheartened now and again that he has not – yet – spotted Nessie, and he is concerned at how few sightings are being made these days by other people. He believes the population of creatures has dwindled from around 30 to about six, and that he may be in danger of outliving the beast. Even veteran Nessie-watchers are giving up. Dr Robert Rines, the American academic who in the mid 1970s took famous underwater photographs of something monster-like, has said he will make one last trip… in search of the creature's bones.

Yet Feltham has no plans to end what he describes as a "vigil" and expects to spend the rest of his life here. Partly that's because he has already invested too much time to return to Dorset empty-handed. Also, he considers Loch Ness "utopia" and can't imagine making a new home elsewhere or – the horror – working nine to five.

"I think I might end up like the old guy from Local Hero," he laughs, wiping green clay from his hands while ducks quack on the lapping waves. "I'll be living on the beach under an upturned boat."