Getting to Fort William

Advice to travellers: Glasgow has several train stations. If you need to catch a connecting train, make sure to get the connecting bus over to the correct station for your transfer. There are probably signs somewhere telling you this. If not, the lady will tell you where the station is and you can try running to it through strange streets with very tall buildings.

If you miss your connecting train, buy another ticket to Fort William for the following day and spend the night in your very own expensive, quiet room with a big bed and four pillows and a bath tub from which you can view the television while it shows you images of natural perfume makers and seaweed baths in Ireland. And also man-eating sharks, and musth-enraged bull elephants on killing sprees. Then sprawl out in bed, beneath the giant picture of lavender, and go to sleep. The next morning, catch a train to Fort William, a somewhat small town but one of the largest (second, I believe, only to Inverness) in the Highlands.

Glasglow is rather dull looking, and the landscape leaving was nothing special. I fell into a doze and was awakened by Ian Anderson doing something particularly boisterous, just in time to catch the start of some spectacular scenery - for the train line goes right through the highlands. You move through the hills and over the edges of them, past grey stormy lochs, stretches of purple heather, rocks. We passed through grey rain and bursts of incredible sunlight, with the shadows always shifting on the hill faces.

I was secretly afraid that I wasn't going to like it. I was worried that my 'Southerner' aspect, as someone put it, wouldn't go well with the Highlands, and that rugged hills and open spaces would appall and threaten me. Didn't happen. There is a marked lack of bush, but there are forests, and there are dark and paler rocks both and low shrubs that here look in place, and there are the spectacular formations of the hills and mountains everywhere. It feels like a landscape where things have happened, and can happen.

A big mountain

And I haven't yet mentioned the loch and rivers, which Fort William and several of the surrounding little settlements are based around. Fort William is one end of the Great Glen Way, a fault line that can be walked, marked by the characteristic long stretches of water that go horizontally across Scotland all the way to Inverness. Fort William is beside Loch Linne, a sea loch. I could smell the salt when I walked down along the water's edge, though it doesn't smell of the ocean all the time. The rivers that flow there move fast, but not so fast that otters can't enjoy it - I've seen two of them playing in the water together in the late afternoon twice, their heads dipping out and their broad tails splashing as they dove down.

All this water is the reason for both the fort that gave the place its name, and for Inverlochy Castle. Both the fort and castle are in ruins, although the castle has fared much better. It may now be hollow, but the four towers are still standing with signs of the three levels, and the walls are a little broken but all there. They are very thick and heavy-looking. Signs of the old moat are still there, and once the river ran right up to the edge of it for defense. The fort was built on the waterfront for the same reason, initially by Ol-i-ver Crom-well (Lord Protector of England, Puritan) and then was used in the suppression of those darned Jacobites. Unfortunately, the land eventually had a railway station slapped through the middle of it, but the edge of the fort wall can still be seen on the waterfront, and the site of that end of the fort is still apparent. Informative billboards and daffodils cover the stretch of gorgeous green grass, and it so happens that the Great Glen Way officially ends here.

Inverlochy Castle

Braveheart Carpark

Today I went on a couple of the walks that can be done in the hills and forests. Ben Nevis has a lot of snow on it, and looks too big for a short stay in Fort William, but perhaps another time I will venture. Perhaps. I walked instead down to Glen Nevis, and found myself a route to take from the Braveheart Carpark - so named as they filmed some of that wonderful historically accurate film there. I walked up to the site of an old fort called Dun Deardail but not pronounced that way, which took me up through forest and the side of a hill with a fantastic view of Ben and the town and glen below, and pretty much everything else. There's little left of that old fort, including knowledge of its definite history, but the outline of it can be seen on the top of a rise with stones in the ground. The fort was burned down, melting some of the stone together, and surely being the cause for its abandonment, but who burned it down and why is a mystery. There are lots of small waterfalls along the pathway, and lots of moss growing up underneath trees, thick and springy. It reminded me, just a little, of some of the tracks in the Kaweka ranges in Hawke's Bay, half- (and possibly mis-) remembered from childhood, though there is nothing of the stretch of history involved in either habitation or the actual land itself as in Scotland.

I also walked the Cow Hill track, taking me through some steep and delightful forest, then eventually breaking forth into open spaces on the hills. The shadows moving across the land were, again, amazing. Walking up to the summit of Cow Hill I encountered some proper Scottish Highland cattle, introduced to the forest area to try and help reestablish it, for once these fine beasts ran free and added to the diversity of the area. I also had yet another fantastic view. But where doesn't have a fantastic view? Even my bunk bed, when I open the curtains, has a fantastic view.

On my way back I encountered a wild doe, who hesitated long enough for me to take one quick photo before bouncing onwards with a bob of white the only distinguisher and it moved into the trees, and a friendly elderly lady who hesitated long enough to chat with me about Sir Edmund Hillary and New Zealand's rugged landscape. She thought that travelling alone has its advantages, as does cooking dinner. "'Oh, it's all right,' he'll say, and you've been slaving away for hours." It was just her and her two dogs, now. One of her dogs was quite beautiful.

I've been staying at Fort William Backpackers, and can recommend it. The staff there very friendly, and at least one of them (the Irish one) is very... full of energy. It's also a nice building, and is on the hill up above the town and the loch, and with Ben Nevis in view from the right angle. It also has a chap who was an extra in the movie 'Highlander' - Christopher Lambert does not like horses, the American woman who played Heather was nice enough, and the chap who played the Kurgen is good value and has a brilliant sense of humour.

Tomorrow I'm going to Glencoe, if things go according to plan, and then will be heading up north. Before I finish up this long post for tonight, I would just like to reiterate that I have seen otters, wild otters. I was filled with delight. The doe was also wonderful - if she'd stayed where she was she'd have been invisible to me, but instead she decided to run up away from the fence and pathway into the 'shelter' of the bare trees. She blended into the land well.

Huh?