Saturday 10/7/2023
- Start: Fort William, Scotland
- End: Fort William, Scotland
- Distance Traveled: 0 miles
Two inches of rain fell in across Scotland over the past 24 hours and several more inches were expected to fall today. Despite this bad weather (and the Yellow warning from the government), I honestly didn’t expect to have my train reservation cancelled this morning because of it the weather.
But apparently the tracks were flooded in places, so rail travel simply wasn’t safe. My 11:40 am train to Glasgow was cancelled. So was this evening’s 5:37 pm train. And tomorrow morning’s 7:44 am train. The earliest possible train I’d be able to travel south on would be 24 hours after my existing reservation.
This cancellation wasn’t just inconvenient. It posed a giant ripple effect on all my follow on travel plans. I had a hotel reservation down in Glasgow this evening – which wasn’t cheap (given that it was a Saturday). And I had an equally expensive train ticket already purchased from Glasgow to London scheduled for Sunday morning for 9:34 am!
So even if tomorrow’s 11:40 am train out of Fort William is running, it won’t get me down to Glasgow until 3:35 pm. That’s six hours after my train for London departs. What a complete dumpster fire of a way to end my Scotland trip!
TOURIST OFFICE
On the ScotRail ticket agent’s suggestion, I walked back to the Fort William tourist information office to see if they could help. Perhaps they could help make me a last minute hotel reservation here in town. Because without wifi or a European sim card, I was without many resources to fix the problem.
When I walked into the tourist office, dripping water everywhere from my 0.75 mile walk up to the train station, a gal named Marta came to my rescue. She surprised me by asking me if I was looking for a bus ticket. A bus ticket?!? Were the buses still running on the flooded roads?
She told me several buses were leaving Fort William over the next few hours (on the same route I rode between Tyndrum and Bridge of Orchy a few days ago), but the next coach with available seats wouldn’t depart until 7:10 pm this evening.
This news provided a glimmer of hope, and I booked the £30 fare on the spot. If that bus could get me to Glasgow this evening – even as late as it was expected to arrive – I could salvage my hotel reservation and even my train ride to London on Sunday.
And with that, I headed back to the hotel I’d just checked out of and asked them to store my bag. Then I parked my butt at a table in their lobby/restaurant for the next six hours as I waited for the bus to make its way south from the Isle of Skye down to Fort William.
WAITING
The rain all afternoon was no joke though. I checked out the local news and it said the entirety of Scotland was getting three weeks’ worth of rain in a single day! Flooding was canceling travel all the way down to Preston (near Manchester, UK). And 10 people had to be airlifted to safety today!
I genuinely wondered if I was just wasting my time sitting around patiently for the bus. Maybe I should just arrange for a hotel room based on the strong possibility that I could be staying in Fort William for another full night. But I hesitated to do anything yet… because I still had hope.
This glimmer of hope was encouraged by technology. The CityLink buses running through Scotland had a live tracker, which allowed me to follow the progress of all the active buses. Each of the CityLink buses scheduled to depart Fort William today made it safely down to Glasgow. So that was promising news.
What’s more, I watched as a steady stream of guests arriving at the hotel’s front desk all afternoon. This bolstered my hope that road conditions were fine, at least on the major thoroughfares like A82. I might still get to Glasgow this evening. Perhaps the travel hiccup was just isolated to the rail lines and smaller, more remote roads.
I departed the hotel once again at 6:30 pm – stepping back out in the heavy rain and toting my duffel bag toward the bus stop on the other side of town. I’d been feverishly checking the status of the #916 bus all afternoon as it made its way south from Uig. It was still on time and running. My bus was due to arrive at Fort William at 7pm and was depart for Glasgow at 10 minutes past the hour. Everything looked as if it was working out in my favor.
But of course, this story doesn’t end well. The bus arrived with the words “Out of Service” illuminating its front instead of “Route 916.” And once all the passengers disembarked, the driver came out to inform everyone that our bus would be terminating in Fort William this evening. It was unable to travel any further because the road to our south was now closed.
There were areas between Fort William and Glasgow that had received 7 inches(!) of rain today – resulting in massive flooding and landslides! And it was dark out. The driver had been instructed by CityLink to cease operations when he got to Fort William, and he had no clue whether the bus would be operating the following day.
I felt crushed as the driver delivered the news. I’d wasted so much mental energy on trying to salvage my travel plans today, and now I was schlepping all my stuff back to the Garrison Hotel where I’d spent the entire day waiting for in their restaurant. I prayed the hotel still had at least one room still available on a this rainy Saturday night. Had I blown my chance to find lodging by doing nothing until after 7 pm??
The long and the short of it was that I had to beg. And I paid far more than I would have liked for a hotel room. But I was ultimately able to finagle a room out of the Garrison’s front desk clerk after she took pity on me. I had a dry roof over my head tonight, but tomorrow was still up in the air.
