Scotland Trip - Glasgow to Fort William via John o' Groats - Part 1/2

We arrived at Glasgow on Saturday morning, the flight was fine (the breakfast not…) and headed into Glasgow city to get our train onwards. We travelled on a rover ticket which was pretty cool in itself, £118 for 8 days of travel within 15 days which I’ll talk about in the next blog post. 

Glasgow Queen Street to Aberdeen: 155 miles (Running total 155 miles)

Aberdeen was our first destination, Brewdog Brewery our goal. The train to Aberdeen was uneventful, we found our hotel and went to find the bus to Ellon. The bus that greeted us was fairly fancy; a coach with USB ports and reclining seats! It was a comfy ride to Ellon. Brewdog was a short walk away from the bus stop but it was pissing it down so felt like an age. But once we got there… It was awesome.

The next day we headed to Inverness. It snowed a bit, but nothing major. In fact, it was the most snow we saw all week. Before we left for Inverness we had something to do… Find the RNLI Lifeboat which Laurence actually started the wiki page for… I didn’t actually get a photo of the boat, but I did take this cool timelapse. Laurence probably has some video from his GoPro he hasn’t bothered to watch since.

Aberdeen to Inverness: 108 miles (Running total: 263 miles)

We didn’t do much in Inverness; looked for cheap GoPro accessories for Laurence and found somewhere to drink. We didn’t find any accessories that weren’t fifty quid, but we did find a Wetherspoons so not all bad.

Inverness to Wick: 161 miles (Running Total: 424 miles)

Onwards to the far north of Scotland. We got a 7am train to Wick/Thurso the next day. It was fairly desolate and remote, but Wick bigger than we were both expecting. I think we’ve now frequented the most northerly branch of Wetherspoons in the UK.

We got the bus to John o Groats and think we were pretty much the only tourists around this early in March. Everyone else on the bus had their shopping.. Fun fact.. John o Groats is not the most northerly point of the mainland UK. That is nearby Dunnet Head.

 Anyway, we’ve done John o Groats! Ten minutes of taking photos of the sign, and an 1 hour 50 minutes waiting for the next bus.. Hmm. Anyway, we got to Thurso late afternoon and checked in to our hotel for the night. There was nothing to do in Thurso. We had a pint in the hotel bar and went for a wander. We literally didn’t find a single pub, and ended up having dinner at a local Chinese restaurant. We got the first train out the next morning back to Inverness along the line we were on the day before where we stopped for lunch, and caught the coach to Fort William. Thurso to Fort William: 218 miles including the coach (Running total: 642 miles)

This day was the longest of the lot. We found a Wetherspoons in Fort William and stayed for a while…

In the next post I’ll write about the scenic railway to Mallaig; and our trip to Glasgow and Edinburgh. Read it here.