Mallaig to Fort William and on to London

Here’s a post about a short section of riding past some lochs to Fort William which wrapped up my riding in the UK and Europe!

So after taking the ferry across from Skye (as mentioned in this post), I headed out of Mallaig and passed a steam train that does the run up from Fort William.

 
This short section Mallaig to the campground I stayed at was pretty picturesque and there were nice quiet roads along the coast with hills in the background.

It was quite a short day, and I stopped early at a campground beside the sea.

After some heavy rain overnight, I hit the road pretty early. Most of this days riding was on roads with pretty narrow shoulders and whilst some sections had bike paths beside them I was pretty glad I had experience fighting traffic in NZ!

Pulling in to Glenfinnan I found an old dining car at the railway station to sit down for a cup of tea. Just as I was finishing up there, I found out that the steam-train was due in a couple of minutes, how’s that for timing! It was packed full of people!

Token photo of a Highland Terrier in the Highands:

I must admit I’m not a Harry Potter fan, but apparently the rail viaduct is in the films. It seems to be a huge tourist attraction with a heap of tourists checking it out.

Across the road is a very nice loch which is good for photos!

I pushed on, taking a road on the other side of Loch Eli, having heard about a little ferry that goes across to Fort William which means you can avoid the busy highway in to town. Unfortunately it doesn’t run between noon and 4pm and I arrived at 1pm. So I had a few hours to kill reading my Kindle and drying out my tent from the rain the previous night.

Eventually it came and I made it across to town. Checked into my hostel and had a chilled out evening there. The hostel was right beside Neptunes Staircase- a set of locks that are part of the Caledonian Canal. There was even a yacht with some cute dogs onboard!

I had the day to kill, waiting for the Caledonian Sleeper train that night. So I did what anyone would do- drank lots of tea, then beer and cider! :-D
Eventually it was time for the train. Unfortunately they combine the trains from Fort William and Inverness together at Edinburgh, so if you take a bicycle from Fort William you have to be up at 1am to move it to the other train! Not cool. Here’s Indie ready to head to London!

Having a beer and processing some photos on the way south.

And here we are at the other end- Euston Station in London!

On the way to my friends house in London I came across these four Chinese who had ridden from Beijing via Tibet!

So I’m in London sorting out my stuff for Asia like buying clothes that fit, sorting out a Chinese Visa and packing all my stuff up for the flight. I’ll do another blog post for that (eventually)- hopefully before I fly out to Japan in a few days!