2023 journey though the Highlands by Victor S Ient
May 2023
I’ve always wanted to travel around the Highlands of Scotland by train and this year I was able to fulfil this ambition. It was a fantastic visit. The weather was marvellous and so was the scenery. My wife I travelled up to Scotland on the intercity train from London to Edinburgh and then crossed to Glasgow, where our journey started. as you will see from our itinerary below, we travelled up the West Coast.
From Glasgow we travelled up the West Coast Highland line to Oban. A fascinating train journey! We stayed a few days at Oban. We had an absolutely fantastic visit to the Island of Mull, the Isle of Staffa where Fingal’s Cave is situated and Iona, which is where St. Columba is reputed to have begun his pilgrimage having travelled from Ireland. We also visited Tobermory on the Isle of Mull. Our train journey continued up the West Coast to Mallaig and over the over the famous Glenfinnan Viaduct and on with a brief visit to the Isle of Skye. We continued our railway journey from Kyle of Lochalsh railway station through Ross and Cromarty (north of the Caledonian canal) in superb weather. The train journey then took us down through the Spey Valley, through Aviemore, and through the Cairngorms which was equally scenic. We made a final stop off in the Highlands at Pitlochry to visit the hydroelectric dam which started generating clean energy in 1951! What a feat of engineering! The good weather continued for our final part of our journey to Edinburgh which is always a pleasure to visit. The icing of on the cake at Edinburgh was meeting up with my cousin and her husband before we returned south.
CLICK HERE for our more detailed diary. To see our photos CLICK HERE
We made the journey to Scotland (Edinburgh) by rail and the round trip was 890 miles. If we had gone by road the mileage would have been 944.
We made a number of stop overs on the journey
- Glasgow (1 night)
- Oban (4 nights)
- Mallaig (1 night)
- Kyle of Lochalsh (1 night)
- Dingwall (1 night)
- Pitlochry (2 nights)
- Edinburgh (1 nights)
On the way back south, we stopped at York for one night. A total of 12 nights
Here are a few photos of our journey. More on my Google Photos CLICK HERE
Vic Ient 