Monday 10/9/2023
- Start: Fort William, Scotland
- End: London, England
- Distance Traveled: 629 miles (122 miles by bus + 400 miles by train + 7 miles by Tube)
After two days of sitting around Fort William waiting for the record-breaking rainfall to end, I was more than ready to get my butt down to London.
The first public transport leaving town was the CityLink #914 bus, which was due to depart at 7:10 am this morning. So I was walking through the quiet, dark streets of Fort William before anyone in the town seemed to be awake.
My luck was looking up though. The bus departed right on time, and I ended up sitting next to a Dutch woman who recognized me from our time on the West Highland Way. Like me, she’d found herself stuck at the northern terminus because of the rain. But the delay wasn’t too much of an inconvenience for her. She’d be home after a 90-minute flight from Glasgow to Amsterdam, whereas I was going to spend the better part of today and tomorrow traveling by bus, train, subway, and airplane to get back to North America.
The roads through Scotland weren’t in terrible shape, but I could tell everything else in the Highlands was definitely flooded. Even Loch Lomond looked to be fuller than it had when I walked past it a week ago. The bus had no trouble at all, and we arrived in Glasgow by 10:30 am, leaving me with two full hours to sightsee before my train departed for London.
My high-speed train ride from Glasgow to London was equally uneventful. It was just a long journey. Luckily, I wasn’t fighting a cold any longer, so the trip through the British countryside was actually quite pleasant. And shortly before 6 pm, we were pulling into Euston Station in London. It had been an 11-hour day of travel, but at least I knew I’d be catching my flight home tomorrow instead of re-booking that reservation too!
In the end, the West Highland Way would be one long distance trail that stood out in my mind as much for the weather as its scenery! And yet, I still had a good time. This was my slowest thru-hike, for sure. I’d taken my time and tried to experience a trail in a completely different way – with inn-to-inn hiking, a baggage transfer, and a very relaxed itinerary.
I’m not sure I’m ready to give up backpacking my normal way or hiking big miles, but at least I pushed myself to try something new. And now that I was back in London, I just needed to find a good coffee. Scotland’s reliance on tea (and their begrudging offerings of instant coffee) left me feeling as if something was always amiss. Old habits die hard, I guess.
