Friday 4^th July                 SPEAN BRIDGE  –  MALLAIG  –  ROY BRIDGE

Wet, wet, wet. No, not the 1980s British pop band, but the weather today. There was a Yellow Warning out for our area of Scotland for heavy downpours and localised flooding, and Mother Nature delivered in spades!

We woke at 7.30, just in time to go down at 8 to the large Scottish breakfast that Margaret had cooked us. Cait and Danny called, so she got to meet them too. (Danny is a ‘bonny wee lad’!) It was raining, so we drove up to Roy Bridge for a look, scoped out the Stronlossit Inn there, and made a booking for tea tonight. Then we drove on a bit further to the Laggan Dam, on Loch Laggan. Nowhere near as impressive as the Fairbairn Dam! After that we headed back to the B&B (still raining.) Despite the dampness, Lex went off for a bit of a walk around the town, while I stayed put in the warm and dry. I called Sandy, and read my book.

                                                               Laggan Dam

Lex was home about 11.15, then we had to get ready for our big excursion of the day – our train ride to Mallaig. We found a park at the station, then walked to the nearby Spar supermarket to get some sandwiches and biscuits (and chocolate) to take on the train. It arrived absolutely on time and off we went. Unfortunately, it was still raining solidly, so everyone on the train realised that photography was pretty much a dead loss. All of our photos are very atmospheric, with lots of artistic rainy blurs on them! A shame, as we travelled through some stunning scenery (lochs, mountains etc) and also across the famed Glenfinnan Viaduct. Luckily we saw it yesterday and were able to get some good photos, because we couldn’t today. Still, it was very impressive to cross it. We travelled mostly beside lochs, and the train line is quite high so there would normally be an excellent view. It took about an hour and a half to reach Mallaig.

Lots of blurry photos of mountains and lochs!

Mallaig is a little harbour town and in the past was very much a fishing village. The train line was built to right beside the harbour to allow the herrings to be whisked away to market. On a fine day it would be delightful to wander around and enjoy it all, but the wind was howling, the rain was coming down. All we train travellers could do with our two and a half hours there was dash from shop to shop to café! A lot of us ended up in the Mallaig Heritage Centre, which was warm and dry and had interesting exhibitions about its history. The Jacobite Express steam train was also there getting ready for its journey, so we got to see it steaming up.

                                                                   Mallaig

                                                                  Jacobite Express

Finally, it was time to dash through the rain back onto the train for the return journey, which was slowed a bit because of heavy rain. We could really see the difference on the trip back, as there was water pelting down the mountains and the streams were all swollen and beginning to overflow.

                                   Leaving Mallaig. The body of water between the mainland                                                                                           and Skye is called The Sound of Sleat.

                                                          Mountain streams were all swollen

Fortunately, the mountains are well used to downpours like this, and those clever Victorians had built their train line high and dry, so it really wasn’t too much of a problem, and we reached Spean Bridge only a minute or so late. We popped home to the B&B to hang up our wet things and get changed for tea. We’ve had a lovely meal at the Stronlossit Inn, and are relaxing and enjoying being warm and dry! Tomorrow we are off to Glasgow, so we are really hoping that the big downpours tail off and we can travel without too many problems.

                                                                 Tea at the Stronlossit Inn

                                                             Spean Bridge station