We left our campsite on Skye and headed back to the mainland. The weather was, once again, totally miserable. If it had been nicer, I would have liked to go around Skye again but honestly we were just having the worst luck with the weather.
On the way back to the route we were on, we had to pass the Eilean Donan castle again, so we stopped and took another photo - not much different from the day before, only maybe with a little less rain...
From there, we retraced our steps from a few days ago and went back to Fort William.
From there, we drove out towards Glenfinnan. But my bladder had other plans and we had to pull off at a public loo on the way there. While I was doing my thing, Josh saw the Jacobite Steam Train coming past. We quickly head out of the parking area, passing the train a little later and hurried on towards Glenfinnan.
It seemed that everyone else had the same idea to get to Glenfinnan at that time too, as there were cars everywhere and the parking areas were full (as was every little place that anyone could park a car along the main road). We did want to go there, but there were too many people and no where to stop. So with that, we decided to chase the train from Fort William to Mallaig, where it stops.
First, we pulled off the road at a lay-by and jumped out, bush bashing a bit to get close to the fence at the tracks. I thought we might have missed it, as we were totally just guessing at this point, but stood and waited a little while. We had guessed pretty well, and sure enough we heard the whistle of the train coming and spotted the steam. It was so cool watching it go past!
We got back in the car and continued along the road, keeping an eye on the tracks. We kept seeing glimpses of the train every now and then, but pulled off the road to watch it go over a bridge.
...and then pulled off the main road to see it go over another bridge.
We'd followed it all the way to Mallaig, where Josh pulled over to let me out so I could go take this photo. I'm not a train person, but this one was pretty cool!
It had been so much fun to chase the train, and a bit of excitement for the morning. We drove back from Mallaig to Glenfinnan to see what we had gone there to see in the first place - the curvy train bridge seen in Harry Potter, Glenfinnan Viaduct. Yes, we might not have seen it with the train on it, but our alternative had been way more fun. We walked around the bridge, before finding the path up to the top platform, for a view over the viaduct. There were loads of people up there. I ended up talking to a couple of guys with their camera set-up who waiting for the train. It wasn't raining then, but the midges were out in force and it wouldn't have been pleasant to sit out there and wait for it. I'll leave that to the hardcore guys. The bridge was nice even without the train going over!
It was built in 1897-1898 and is the longest concrete railway bridge in Scotland at 380m, and crosses the River Finnan at a height of 30m.
On the way back to Fort William we stopped off at M&S to buy some lunch then stopped at Linnhe picnic area to eat our lunch next to the Loch. We then drove through the Glencoe area, which was lovely.
We drove around a bit that afternoon unable to find a campsite, and with really limited reception. We ended up parking at the side of the road where we got some signal and looked around for something. There seemed to be plenty of hostels but no campsites. So we ended up driving to a place that had wooden wigwams and booked one for the night. It was warm and the bed was much more comfortable than my camping mattress. This was the last accommodation we paid for, we had more luck with finding campsites the further south we drove!