Scotland Diary: Fort William
Fort William is genuinely a wonderful place. The Western Scottish Highland sea views are to die for and if I wasn’t vegetarian, I’m pretty sure I’d be trying each and every piece of seafood available.
The only downside (a very slight downside) for us was how busy it was. The road into Fort William was full of traffic works which subsequently meant blaring out a lot of 80’s tunes and singing at the tops of our lungs. I actually managed to capture one of these moments on video, us singing ‘If I Could Turn Back Time’ by Cher, which promptly reminded me to take more photos and clips of our travels. So, don’t worry, soon you’ll be absolutely inundated with photographs rather than just my poor attempt at reliving it through words on the screen!
We had some time to kill before our next camping ground for the night so what better way to view Fort William than head straight to the town centre? Fort William is known as the ‘Gateway to Ben Nevis’, which is the U.K.’s highest peak and something I was desperate to see. There are forest trails and ski runs at the Nevis Range Mountain Resort, and it’s the home of the Ben Nevis Distillery.
I personally really liked the town centre. It actually reminded me a little bit of home with the cobbled stones and hipster atmosphere but with double the amount of Patagonia-wearing tourists. It was especially nice to see (and hear) buskers back on the streets with one girl singing in Gaelic.
The next campsite that we’d booked was called Bunroy Park and once we arrived, we were told we’d managed to nab the last spot available. Something we seemed to keep doing…
Bunroy Park was peaceful, calm and quite adult I’d say. It seemed to be more aimed at couples, groups of friends or small families. The owners took Covid extremely seriously and to be fair, the next place we went also took it seriously, maybe even more so, so it may have been the Fort William area in general. We did enjoy our time at Bunroy though, the weather was still shining and rather than go for any walks, we decided to just take it easy and relax.
The ducks that would visit us each evening at Bunroy… or scrounge food… either one.
This actually makes a nice segway into our day spent at Costa which you may have read about in My Wild Scottish Adventure. Well, we didn’t spend the day there exactly, but we did spend at least four hours treating ourselves to coffee, hot chocolate and free wifi. It’s actually where I started to write my Scotland Diary.
The whole idea of writing about our travels took a lot of convincing, to be honest. Neither myself nor Rachel, are the most glamorous or elegant of people. We’re definitely not Instagram models and let’s be honest, sometimes we lack a little common sense. We are well aware of all this. So the thought of truly being honest and real, giving an insight into how we do things and how often things go wrong for us was pretty jarring. Every day at least one of us questions why we’re here doing this but hey, four hours in Costa apparently makes you brave and want to get your story out there!
Plus, we think we’re funny, even if the rest of the world doesn’t. I mean, at least we make each other laugh.
There really isn’t much to let you know about our time at Bunroy. We mostly sat in the sunshine, cooked and observed our neighbours. We also made some pretty ridiculous videos testing out whether or not we should attempt Youtube. The answer was a resounding no, we really shouldn’t. Who on earth would want to see us, two idiots in their thirties, traipsing about pretending to be dinosaurs?
We also thought about applying to Channel 4’s ‘Hunted’ or The BBC’s ‘Race Around The World’. Perhaps there’s still hope for those two…
Glen Roy
The next day, we packed up quite late and set off for yet another campsite, which was literally right around the corner: Glen Nevis Holiday Park. This campsite was also lovely and our pitch was simply perfect for us. The owners were extremely friendly, chatty, welcoming and definitely ‘on it’ when it came to cleaning and mowing the grass. They were also quite strict with the rubbish, which made us nervous at first because the last thing we wanted was to get something as simple as separating rubbish and recycling wrong.
We felt so relaxed and chilled out at this campsite that we really didn’t do much of anything. The heat was absolutely roasting and for once, there didn’t seem to be any midges. So out came the mats and blankets for a spot of sunbathing and soaking in all that vitamin D.
Actually, there may have been a good few hours where I don’t think we moved at all.
Not an inch.
Not even when a loud resounding *BANG* blasted through the park. It had the owners on high alert, looking for the source before landing on us and stating, “well it can’t be the girls, look how chilled out they are!”
It ended up being a burst wheelbarrow tyre, too hot under the July sunshine.
Glen Roy
The best part of our trip to Fort William was actually as we were leaving. We decided to take a slight detour to Glen Roy National Nature Reserve and we were so glad that we did.
Glen Roy is positively breathtaking.
Glen Roy
The endless rolls of pure greenery. The tremendous but vast landscape in front of us held random pockets of native birch, oak, birds, deer, sheep and even golden eagles! The beautiful spring flowers, the dips, the valleys - simply stunning.
Basically, the ‘Parallel Roads’ of Glen Roy were formed at the end of the last Ice Age. A series of ice-dammed lakes slowly developed and then drained over time, creating this incredible geological, glacier-like wonderland.
We spent quite a long time basking in the landscape here, well, not just basking but there may have been some out-of-tune singing too... After all, the hills ARE alive with the sound of music…
See what I did there?
Read the next entry ‘Scotland Diary: Glencoe| Day One’
Read the previous entry ‘Scotland Diary: Loch Lomond and The Trossachs| Day Two’
