Fort William -The Scottish Highlands
On a trip to the highlands, we decided to take the train to Fort William, and travel to visit Glencoe to see the pictorial views. The train timings available to Fort Williams from Glasgow are limited, only three trains are available - at 5 am, 8 am and one later in the day. The train journey is about 4 hrs. Also, the last train from Fort William to Glasgow was at 5:37 pm. Which left us with a short span of about 5 hours to explore the highlands.
After booking the tickets did we realize that the train to Fort William does not pass through Glencoe, in-short Glencoe does not even have a train station. The other alternative would be to take a bus from Fort William to Glencoe but since the journey to Glencoe is almost 40 min, we would not get to see anything around Fort William. Lesson learned -Plan ahead. We checked various other stations but none of them would work. With no hope for Glencoe, we were ready to explore Fort Williams. Having read about a few articles on Fort William we started our journey early in the morning.
The train journey was a scenic beauty with mountains after mountains. The snow-capped mountains between the blue sky and the loch make the view breathtaking. We saw deer with horns and without, just wandering in the highlands, were super excited.
Eventually, after the 4 hr journey, we reached Fort William. I would suggest these two stops before Fort William where you could get down if you want to trek the mountains — Rannoch and Corrour. Our very first resort was to find the information desk to check information regarding the bus to go to steal falls, which apparently was the nearest destination to visit. But we were disheartened when we found out that there were no buses from Fort William to steal falls and also if we even ended up going to Ben Nevis it was advised that there won’t be enough time. The suggestions were to visit the Inverlochy castle, the museum and if we wanted to see the view then to take the cow hill circuit.
Our first priority was to eat, found a famous fish and chips restaurant, and shared the haddock between us. Then we decided to go for the cow hill circuit and then later visit the castle. We walked through the town, it was a pretty little town filled with local residents. It had such a calm and peaceful feel altogether.
We started the trek through the cow hill circuit after figuring out the beginning of the trail. We did not rush, took our time enjoying the beautiful sceneries. It was beautiful -the sky, the snow-capped mountains. We reached the summit after trekking for about 2:30 hrs, it was completely worth it. The weather was perfect no rain. We realized we don’t have enough time to go for the great glen walk or the castle as it would take almost 2 hrs to reach there from the cow hill circuit and about an hour back to the station.
So we trekked down the hill and went to the town, there was a small church in the town. Visited the church, it had beautiful interiors.
After that, we decided to go grocery shopping for junk at Morrisons. Brought chips, ice cream, and cake. Had the cake with the ice cream, right when it started drizzling. Badly wanting to see the Great Glen walkway I tagged my friend along with me. We found a place very close to Loch Eil and just sat there for some time -PEACEFUL.
Around 5:10 pm we left and headed back to the station. The train was right on time thus bringing an end to our trip to Fort William. It was a great trip even though we did not see a lot of places, we had fun.
If you are planning a trip to Fort William, I would suggest taking a bus through Glencoe or having a stayover if taking the train. The best alternative would be to rent a car and just drive to the highlands.
