As I've already explained, I spent the weekend in Glasgow celebrating my cousin's 30th birthday. The party on Saturday night was fun, but being with family I left pretty early, mainly because my family were the only people I knew there. (I'm sure my parents would consider 11:30pm quite late, but that's life.)
On Sunday (2nd August), then, my mum went off with my aunt and uncle to see Pollok House near Glasgow, a National Trust property with some very nice gardens. My dad and I, however, had our sights on a much bigger prize: the West Highland Line.
Disappointingly, the Sunday timetable precludes the possibility of doing a day trip from Glasgow to Mallaig and back, since the first train doesn't leave Glasgow until 12:20pm. So we contented ourselves with the - admittedly superb - run to Fort William and back.
1220 Glasgow Queen St to Fort William, arr 1608
Distance: 122.75 miles; walk-up day return £15.65
(Headcode 1Y43, operated by First ScotRail using Sprinter 156467)
and
1731 Fort William to Glasgow Queen St, arr 2114
Distance: 122.75 miles; walk-up day return price listed above
(Headcode 1Y46, operated by First ScotRail using Sprinter 156456)
Scenery: 10/10 - What can I say? Not just the best railway-line scenery in the UK; I doubt it can be beaten anywhere in the world.
Punctuality: 7/10 and 8/10 respectively - A few minor delays due to the line being single-track, and also waiting for trains to join at Crianlarich, but otherwise very respectable for a single-track line.
Speed: 9/10 - Creditably fast for a line in the middle of nowhere (even if we didn't exceed 60mph).
Comfort: 8/10 - I expected to be much more tired after this journey, but the seats were comfortable, and the windows large enough to take many photographs.
Staff: 7/10 - Just the one ticket inspection in each direction; a good trolley service, even if it only passed up the train once; but the train was very busy and the staff were visibly flustered.
Being stuck in a Class 156 Sprinter for 3 hours, 45 minutes at a time was not something my dad and I were looking forward to. However, the seats were surprisingly comfortable, the legroom was good, and the visibility was better. I emerged from 7½ hours of sitting on trains feeling much less stiff than I had on many previous days, which was impressive.
The train from Glasgow was composed of three two-car units coupled together. We were to split into two portions at Crianlarich, half heading for Oban and half for Fort William. The sensible thing would have been to send four carriages to Fort William and two to Oban. But this is the British railway network: sense is a rarity. So, of course, four carriages went to Oban, leaving just two carriages to Fort William. On a sunny Sunday afternoon.
About three-quarters of the seats were reserved, and by the time we got there all the other window seats were taken. Fortunately, about ten minutes into the journey, someone pointed out that a number of the reservations hadn't been taken up, so we found two window seats that had been reserved but weren't being used.
The train was reasonably busy until Crianlarich, where a large party of about thirty foreign tourists boarded the train (having booked a large block of seats, fortunately!), meaning the train was full and standing from Crianlarich.
I walked briefly down to the Oban portion to use the toilet, and it was less than half-full before Crianlarich, with not that many getting on. So we had four cars going where two would have done, and two cars going where four would have made things much less unpleasant. Utter stupidity on the part of ScotRail.
Fortunately, the journey on the way back was rather quieter, and we got two more window seats on the opposite side of the line. Again, though, it was two cars from Fort William and four cars from Oban which joined at Crianlarich. (Unfortunately the platforms can't cope with anything longer than six cars, so the obvious solution of using eight-car trains with four going to each is not possible.)
Given the line was single-track, I didn't expect the punctuality to be perfect. On the way to Fort William, we were delayed by about five minutes at Ardlui waiting to pass the train in the other direction (and swap crews with them), though we made a little of this back up and arrived in Fort William just three minutes late.
On the way back, we were a few minutes late getting away from Fort William, but made it up easily and arrived in Crianlarich seven minutes early. However, the portion from Oban which was joining us was a little bit late, so we left three minutes late, but made most of it back and we arrived in Glasgow just one minute down.
But none of what I've said mattered. Not a jot. Because the West Highland Line, known in Scots Gaelic as "Rathad Iarainn nan Eilean" (literally "the Iron Road to the Isles"), is the greatest railway journey in the world.
It's not just me saying this: the readers of the travel magazine Wanderlust voted the West Highland Line as the best railway journey in the world; it even beat the iconic Trans-Siberian Railway.
The entire line is simply spectacular, and I'm going to run out of superlatives.
The line starts life as a suburban railway line along the north side of the Clyde; but at Helensburgh, we lurch to the right, leaving the commuter lines, and start climbing up the hill. We cling to the hillside, high above Gare Loch, with great views down to the water below. A brief cutting takes us from Gare Loch to Loch Long, which is much narrower, like a Norwegian fjord.
A short isthmus connecting Arrochar to Tarbert (with just the one station half-way between them) takes us from Loch Long to the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond. Here is where the train starts to come into its own: the road along Loch Lomond traverses its western edge at the level of the water, but the railway line runs much higher up the hillside, giving you a spectacular view down to the loch.
At Ardlui, we leave Loch Lomond and start climbing up Glen Falloch to one of the great crossroads of the Highlands: Crianlarich. This tiny village of fewer than 200 people is one of the few mountain passes to the western Highlands. It is the crossroads of the A82, the great road north from Glasgow to Fort William and Inverness, and the A85, which runs east-west from Perth to Oban.
It is also a junction of railway lines, though not as major as it once was. Originally, there were two railway lines, one from Glasgow to Fort William, and the other from Stirling and Callander to Oban, much like the roads. The line to Callander was closed by a landslide in 1964, so Crianlarich is now a simple fork where trains from Glasgow choose to head to Oban or Fort William. (Or, in the case of our train, divide in two portions, one for each.)
Crianlarich marks, roughly speaking, the half-way point on our journey to Fort William. But while the scenery up to now has given us some great views of lochs, the views to come are even better.
Our next stop is Tyndrum - probably the smallest place in the world to boast two railway stations, owing to the necessity of having one at the bottom of the hill on the line to Oban, and one at the top of the hill on the line to Fort William - before we climb a valley up to Bridge of Orchy.
On the way up the valley, the economy of the railway builders works greatly in our favour. In order to save building a long viaduct over a small river, they turned the railway up the valley on one side, crossed the river a mile further up on a short viaduct, and brought the railway down the viaduct again. The whole effect is known as a "horseshoe curve", and it gives us some spectacular views of the valley and the surrounding mountains.
At Bridge of Orchy, we begin to climb on to one of the great wildernesses of Europe: Rannoch Moor. It was a gigantic feat of engineering to build a railway line over the vast, bleak, treeless bog of Rannoch Moor: the line is built on a bed of tree roots and brushwood which, essentially, floats on the peat. The line was completed in 1894, after seven years of construction.
Here we part company with the A82, which we have followed since Loch Lomond: its path is to the west, down Glen Coe to the coast at Ballachulish, before turning north for Fort William. The railway turns north-east, and takes a completely different route to Fort William, curving slowly round to the west and approaching Fort William from the north. The road passes to the west of Ben Nevis, along the coast; the railway line passes instead round the east and north of Britain's highest mountain.
The line of the road, apart from a steep climb out of Bridge of Orchy, is certainly the easier one: we are now climbing to a summit of 1350ft. The railway line is now all alone, apart from the odd farm track: there is no other means of transportation for miles around.
However, it can be explained once again by the builders' lack of money: while the route down Glen Coe would have been easier, it would have required a bridge over Loch Leven at Ballachulish. It was cheaper to plough through the unspoilt wilderness and climb to the roof of Rannoch Moor.
Once again, their thrift is our reward: the views over the unspoilt Rannoch Moor are second to none.
We climb steeply up the valley of Tulla, up to Rannoch station. Here we meet a road, but it comes not from the west, but from the east, from Pitlochry; the only way from Rannoch station to Fort William or Oban is by railway line, unless you want to drive for hours on end. From here, you can see down the long valley to the east that drains Loch Rannoch not into the Atlantic but the North Sea, with the pointy top of Schiehallion easily visible in the distance:
Ever so gradually, we snake our way up the hillsides to the 1350ft-high summit at Corrour, probably the remotest station in all of Britain. At least Rannoch had road access, even if it is 36 miles along a B-road to Pitlochry. Corrour has *none*. The only way in or out of Corrour is by train, or perhaps by Land Rover. There are literally no roads for at least ten miles.
Corrour is one of the greatest places to stay if you're hill-walking: there are at least seven Munros (hills over 3000ft) within easy reach, and there are basically no other ways to get at them. Britain's most remote hostel, on the shores of Loch Ossian, is one of a very small number of places to stay in the area.
Having crested the summit, we weave our way down slightly, before emerging high above the shores of Loch Treig. This beautiful loch was totally unknown before the railway line was built: we descend for five miles, gradually getting closer to the level of the water. This shot was taken from near the top:
After Tulloch station, we return to the road; but this time it is the A86 from Aviemore down to Fort William that we follow. We turn west, and head down Glen Spean, passing the stunning Monessie Gorge, before sweeping low round the north of Ben Nevis and, after a couple more stations, into Fort William.
It was a pity that the Sunday timetable did not permit us to get to Mallaig and back, since the section from Fort William to Mallaig is just as spectacular again, with the famous viaduct at Glenfinnan (featured in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets). But, frankly, the section of railway over Rannoch Moor is so spectacular that any disappointment disappeared very quickly.
We spent some time looking around Fort William; by now, the high cloud had dissipated somewhat and the sun was beginning to shine all the brighter. After a little over an hour in Fort William, we boarded our return train back to Glasgow. The ride over Rannoch Moor was all the more spectacular for the sunshine.
Photography along the line was quite difficult: much of the line is surrounded by trees. Most of the return journey was spent with me looking forwards, trying to see the next opening in the trees, and when I did I would shout "clear!" to my dad, at which point he (looking backwards) would fire off as many photographs as he could before the trees closed in again.
This was particularly frustrating along the shores of Loch Lomond, where the views were superb but all too fleeting. Between us we took over 600 photographs on the day; unfortunately the majority have trees in just the wrong places. (I dread to think what it would have cost in developing if we had been using film - thankfully we were using digital!)
I can safely say that is, without doubt, the best railway line I've ever been on. And I look forward to travelling on it again.
The whole day was both the shortest in distance, and the cheapest (not counting the days on which I did nothing!), though since we averaged 33mph it was certainly not the shortest in time:
Total time on trains: 7 hours, 31 minutes.
Distance travelled: 245.5 miles.
Walk-up price: £15.65.
I'll write one more post, with the final tally of statistics, as well as making some awards, looking back at the whole two weeks, in the near future. Watch this space!
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