2 Fatties in a Fiat 500 - North Coast 500 - Day 2

[AJ86]

Life at the Mercure was the same as the day before, breakfast at the hotel cooked to order then back to the room to pack up. We got our belongings together, checked out and headed to the car. Our journey today would take us south west to Fort william around a 66 mile drive. A quick detour to Tesco to pick up a forgotten memory card for my go pro and we were on our way.

A 20 minute jaunt down the A82 and we soon left the hustle and bustle of city life and started sailing down the road parallel to Loch Ness. There were a number of pull ins for us to get out and see the loch and try and spot the infamous nessy! The loch was huge and so so so much bigger than I first imagined. From one end to the other with some stops along the way took us around an hour to complete.

Next loch of the day was Loch Oich, where we again stopped to take in the views. Carrying on down the A82 we got to Loch Lochy, another huge loch, and was so peaceful with no road noise to be heard. It was also very picturesque with the mist on the hills in front of us and we could just spot out some houses on the hillside.

Next up we continued ontowards Fort Williams and first stop was to a M&S food hall to pick up a little picnic for this afternoons activity. It was now around 1pm so we headed to tonights hotel, the Garrison, but they wouldn’t let us check in early, so we left the car in the carpark and walked through town, food in hand to the train station.

I had booked us onto the Jacobite Steam train that would take us on a round trip to Mallaig. For those not familiar the Jacobite is basically the Hogarts Express!

With Covid safe carriages, the tables of 4 only sat your party so we had the table to our selves. Its pot luck where you are seated and which direction the carriage is. The main highlight of the journey is the viaduct which you want to be sitting on the left for, of course when boarding the train we were on the right! As the boarding of the train finished and departure time approached there was a table on the left with no one to be seen, so I wasted no time in throwing our belongings over and scooted on in. The carriages were Covid safe and had screens between each table, masks were compulsory of course, but a lot of my fellow travellers decided against this rule and didn’t wear one the entire trip. Staff were next to useless in enforcing the rule and didn’t say a peep to them.


The train ride was beautiful and we enjoyed the scenery that passed. We had part of our picnic and watched the world whizz by. I kept a close eye on google maps and soon enough we were approaching the Glenfinnan viaduct. The train slowed down a little and I stuck my go pro out the window to make the most of the views. It was really magical experience, the closest we got to this before was the Hogwarts Express in Universal and this of course blew it out of the water.

The amount of people that had also made the journey to photograph the train heading over the viaduct was unbelievable also. The train carried on and 2 hours later we were in Mallig. Or I would like to think Hogsmead!

Mallig is a very very small town, and took around 5 mins to walk around, there were around 2 pubs, a coop, fish and chip shop, ice cream shop and a Harry potter themed shop. We stopped by the harbour to enjoy the peace and tranquility and watched some of the fishing boats come and go.

We decided on something more substantial to eat and headed to the fish and chip shop, it looked like the majority of the train had the same idea as there was a massive queue. We grabbed our chips, and also a quick pop into the coop for some drinks and we sat on the harbour again to eat whilst being overlooked by a flock of seagulls!

It was soon time to head back to the train and we settled in for the return trip back to Fort William, again the train slowed whilst going over the bridge and soon enough the sun had set and it was dark outside, so not much more to be seen of the views. Arriving back into Fort William I took a couple more photos of the train and said thank you to the crew for a lovely day out. It was only a short walk back to the hotel where we checked in and settled into our room.

We still had some left over food from our train picnic so snacked on this for our evening meal. The Garrison was a lovely little hotel, rooms were on the small side, the hotel used to be a police station, and you could have booked a night in one of the cells, which we decided against!

It was a lovely day out on the train, it really was like looking out at the set of Harry Potter with the lochs and going over the viaduct.

Day 3

[caj]

I'm enjoying this! Its putting me in planning mode!

[snowbelle]

It seems we went a month after you and as we have never been to Scotland it was so good to get out on the open road and see the amazing scenery
We drove the whole way from the Welsh border and it did become a bit of an avoidance of lockdown rules !
My advice for anyone going is make sure every hotel is cancellable just in case
Lots of places were closed by the time we got there but our boot full of snacks and camping stove and camping kettle was an absolute blessing for saving money on the go.