April 2 - Day 2 of Scottish Highlands
The day started with a Full Scottish Breakfast and some careful packing. There were three of us taking an earlier bus so we left first taking our time to the bus station. The other two stayed to explore a bit more of Scotland before taking a train to meet us at the half-way point in Fort Williams.
We got to the bus station early enough to figure out how the bus shelter worked. The bus we were taking did not have our destination name as its location, so we had to do some guesstimating to figure out what bus we were supposed to take.
Once comfortably seated on the bus with our snacks in our laps and each of us with a row to our own, our journey began. I'd thought about napping or watching some videos on my phone, but the scenery was too amazing. We passed by castles, historic landmarks, Bens with snow-tipped peaks, and drove around majestical lochs.
I was able to figure out some of the scenery like Loch Lomond simply because we drove around it for about a half-hour, so I was able to catch a few signs here and there.
Some of the bus stops were in the middle of nowhere where backpackers would get on. I even saw a few heading towards the mountains/Bens.
When we arrived in Fort Williams, with a few extra minutes to spare (thankfully). I hurried off the bus and the lady behind me asked if I was Canadian as I had my Canada mitts visible in the pocket of my backpack. She was disappointed that I wasn't also from B.C. She'd been one of the backpackers who'd been picked up in what looked like the middle of nowhere. I didn't have much time to talk as I had to figure out where my next bus was.
I ended up asking some nice old man who was in line for one bus if it was stopping by Glenfinnan and he told me yes, so I guess that was my bus. When I got on the bus driver never actually said I was on the right bus, but let me on nonetheless. There was only one other of the girls who was going to join me to Glenfinnan, so the two of us worked together trying to figure things out. We passed by another Loch or two on the way and definitely passed Ben Nevis at some point.
The Fort Williams bus station was at a grocery store and quite a few of the passengers had their groceries with them. Imagine if O.C. Transpo had all their buses coach style. That'd be something. I guess it helps a bit since the journey is quite long.
The old man reassured me when we arrived in Glenfinnan, which was nice to know even though I had my GPS tracking my location so I knew when to get off. Had I not had that, it would've been a great relief.
We got off and headed to the visitors centre to get the low down on what was there to see and how to get there as I hadn't thought to look up anything beforehand. We got a map of the area and were told about the two viewpoints. I also asked about how to get our bus back as there wasn't a visible bus station so we weren't really sure how we were to get back to Fort Williams to get our bus to Skye. It was good we asked as we found out we were going to have to hail down the bus and that just standing in the bus shelter wasn't going to do anything since it was hidden to the bus driving by. After talking to the nice worker we headed to the first viewpoint, which is also the easiest and shortest path to view the Glenfinnan viaduct.
The minute we got about half-way up it not only began to rain, but hail, which is just a lovely start to the day. I only managed to get a few pics from this spot before we headed back down. It then began to pour so I suggested we head back into the visitor centre.
We looked around the shop a bit. They had lots of the classic overly priced Harry Potter souvenirs and other Scottish items.
A lot of other people piled into the shop. My friend was anxious to head back out as we didn't know how long it'd take us to get through the second viewpoint. I just wanted to wait out the heavy rain as I didn't want my back pack to get too soaked, since its not waterproof. Plus, my friend had zero waterproof items on her, so i was a bit surprised by her desire to head back out. She'd had an umbrella, but Scottish winds took care of that pretty quickly.
From my own experience of heavy rains with daylight still visible I suggested we wait 5 more minutes. Once those minutes died out we ventured back out into the still pouring rain, but just as we got to the second path it stopped. I was able to get a few pictures here and there.
There weren't a lot of others out thankfully because of the rain so we got some good pictures as we walked under the viaduct and explored the area around it before heading up the hill towards the iconic viewpoint where the Harry Potter Express shots were filmed. There were a few others at this point, but they didn't get in the way too much. On the way up I fell on my hands as we had to climb up some oddly placed steps and any step that made me lift myself up with one leg placed me severely off balance due to the heavy load on my back. Thankfully I didn't get hurt, just a bit dirty.
There was a lot more to explore up high, but I just stuck to the bridge area since that's what I came for and I didn't think it'd be a good idea with my heavy bag to explore much further since we still had to decent.
On the way back down my friend helped me in a few tricky areas as falling face forward would have been really dangerous in those areas.
Once back at the road we decided to head out to the monument which was on Loch Shiel. This area was also used in the Harry Potter movies. It also looked like the Great Lake from Hogwarts (quite majestic). We then headed back to the bus shelter to wait out the bus. We jumped at almost any loud bus-sounding vehicle coming by (in either direction).
There were a few others with us, but one can never trust a stranger to hail down the bus for you. It eventually came and we got on. This one was even smaller than the last, probably because it's not a frequent route. Most people seemed to come to the viaduct via tour companies or by car.
One of the passengers was a student who was dropped off by the school and the bus driver seemed to be on familiar terms enough that it looked like the student took this route frequently.
Once back in Fort Williams we had about an hour before our next bus so we decided to head to the loch and explore that area.
The rocky beachy area was really cool to explore. I ended up picking a few free souvenirs. The first was a red brick-shaped item which probably was from a child's block set, but was interesting enough. Then I found two sea-shells. One actually broke during this whole trip, but I've got some interesting ideas on how to fix it once I get back to Canada.
Then we hit up the Lidl (a very cheap grocery chain). I got some cheap short bread and some other foods. There was also a puppy outside the shop that I gave a few pets. I then found out my friend had a fear of dogs.
Then I used one of my McDonald's monopoly pieces to get a free apple pie and bought myself a burger for the bus ride.
We caught up with the others at the bus shelter. The bus driver loaded my backpack in the under-bed and then headed out to fill-up on gas. We ended up departing about 15 minutes late. Buses either run on time or late - never early.
This journey was just as nice as the last. They really keep the bus windows clean - maybe from all the rain. I'd wanted to see Eilean Donan Castle and was able to from the bus as we drove past it.
Once in Kyleakin we headed to our hostel where we easily checked in. Our caravan was star trek themed and each of our beds was one of the characters. I had Uhura. There were already others in the caravan - all girls so we didn't have to worry about having to be careful about changing (we'd paid for mixed-accommodation). The caravan was also outside. There were bathrooms inside we had access to and a sketchy outhouse I refused to step in to check out.
We were tired from the bus rides and what we'd done during our individual excursions so we ended up planning what we were going to do in the morning and setting a wake-up routine.
To go to the bathroom people needed to use their phones as a flashlight, which is fine, but every time they came-in/left the light always ended up hitting my eyes, so I had to pull-out Emily's hostel emergency kit and put on my eye-mask. I also put in the earplugs. It wasn't terribly cold thankfully as they had placed working radiators on both ends of the caravan. We also had plenty of outlet space as there was an adaptor with plenty of ports. The only problem was that you couldn't use your phone and charge it at the same time. You also had to leave it near the outlet.
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