Friday morning and we set off from our hotel in Oban to catch the 8.57 train to Crianlarich. After arrival at the station the scene became quite worrying, many many backpackers many many baby boomers suitcases rolling along. How many people are catching this train? Our two carriage train arrives, kept closed until prepared for its next journey, where all this luggage is going to go the least of our worries, we get on all seats with their reserved signs poking up gracious me thankfully Sam finds two seats at the back of the carriage with no apparent reserved signage we went for them our cases in the designated wheelchair spot thank heavens no wheelchairs. We have reserved all our rail journeys in Europe but we had not here. We get to Crianlarich hop across the platform for our train to Mallaig same situation all reserved thankfully we find two unreserved seats masses of people then the same thing again at Fort William lots alight Sam said do you want to move I said no better the devil you know than the one you don't luckily more humans get on all the seat vacated all reserved again. We breathe a sigh of relief as we did not have to move. I do have to say the scenery the entire journey was breathtaking and from Fort William to Mallaig very stunning, lots of young men from every country on earth by the sounds of them doing this journey because we cross the Glenfinnan Viaduct (the Hogworts train in Harry Potter crossed this viaduct) we will get a pic tomorrow as we go back that way.
We arrived here in Mallaig walked to our B & B a very beautiful view over the Harbour. There is not one vacancy in the town as there never is in these towns any more. This is a vastly different journey than our one in 2011 one could have been flexible then not now.
We walked everywhere extremely pretty. It is a very busy harbour fishing which is how this village began in 1846 it has varied and changed over the years. Lord Lovat owned all the land around here and he built the first wharf to assist the local fisherman after the potato famine. The railways came in 1901 and of course this changed how the fish went to market etc. The fishing changed during the two World Wars some for better some not.
This is a very busy port and fishing vessels and many ferries use this harbour crossing back and forth from Skye, Rum, Eigg and a couple of other islands. All sorts of other smaller vessels taking many many pleasure seekers young and old on all sorts of different journeys.
We are about to head out and something to eat and then get prepared for tomorrow we have an epic day tomorrow our first train 10.10 back to Glasgow then one to Perth and then one to Inverness where we will arrive at 7.30 (we have reserved our seats for all of these journeys).
All the best Sabine and Sam xx
Interesting that there are so many tourists around. Must be good for the local economies, although I wonder how much is seasonal. Has someone asked the SNP to fix the trains?
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