In the Fog

Today was our second day proper in Fort William, and rather than lounge around and do nothing to the best of our ability as we did yesterday, today I wanted to go climb some mountains. So I chivvied Jen out of bed and then lay around playing Pokemon for a while before we collectively got our act together and managed to exit the hotel. Doing so is hard work when you know that you're at least a mile of loch and B&B scenery away from what scant facade of civilisation Fort William offers, but we made it. Walking through the pitch blackness with all our luggage and no true idea where we were going was much less fun than taking a pleasant stroll into town, though I can't quite place why that would be.

Our hotel is an old, rambling building that seems to only have three members of staff, two of which are almost disarmingly eager to please their guests. I don't know if they're just a bit too intense for my liking or if they just don't have much to do since the tourist season is pretty much dust, but for whatever reason it can be kind of unnerving. They're also remarkably ill-informed about bus and walking routes involving the huge mountain that is pretty much the only reason that people would come to this place, but they're trying their best. Alistair, the dude who runs reception most of the time, did clue us in as to the gondola ride at Nevis Range, which sounded like a feasible alternative to my 'lets walk up Ben Nevis' plan that Jen enthusiastically vetoed, and so we set out today with intent to make our way there.

Fort William has a high street, which came as quite a remarkable sight after three months on Harris. That is pretty much all that it has, though, aside from a small standing army of hotels and B&Bs, so we didn't spend much time in town itself, stopping only by the travel centre to find out where and when to catch the bus to the Range, and at Morrisons to buy some tasty snacks for our miniature adventure. The bus itself was cheap in comparison to the Hebridean bus services, which were pretty pricey but admittedly had to cover a much greater distance. Instead of an hour of mountains and lakes, we were treated to ten minutes of trees before being dropped off at the visitor centre. Here it was quick and easy to buy tickets and leap aboard a gondola.

On the way up I was irresistibly reminded of what Dad would say in such a situation, something like 'we'll be fine, only nine people died on this gondola last month'. The elder couple we were sharing our ride up with took this all pretty well and even joined in with my increasingly dark predictions for what we'd find at the top. This all took on a rather ominous tone as we ascended into the clouds, and the gondola station at the top was but an indistinct looming shape ahead of us, but in the end we neither found ourselves attacked by mountaineering zombies nor accidentally ascended up to Heaven.

At the summit, the views were nonexistent, as the thick cloud cover engulfed everything, leaving a space of only about twenty metres in every direction where we could see. Though this meant we couldn't get any pictures, as someone who's climbed mountains and oohed and aahed over the view plenty of times, I actually found the change quite refreshing, the feeling of being amongst the clouds pleasingly alien. Looking out from the viewpoint into the thick bank of fog, which offered occasional glimpses of the world beyond, I was reminded of the various city in the sky myths, as well as the Northern Lights - you know, strange things in the sky that can only be glimpsed at certain times, shrouded from sight of the common man.

That was about it as far as mountaineering went for the day, so we took a more sedate gondola ride back down and hung out in the cafe, waiting for our bus. In due course we discovered that the nasty lady at the travel centre had in fact lied about the time when the last bus came by, and we'd missed it. Luckily, we were able to entreat the kindness of a couple of holidaying Londoners for a ride back into town.

Since Fort William had failed to metamorphose into an interesting place with lots of stuff to do whilst we'd been away, we stopped off for some food before heading home. At the bar place thingy that we stopped at, we finally took the opportunity to try out this haggis stuff, which was alright. I think in having unconsciously avoided eating it for so long I'd pedestalised it to some extent, and it didn't live it to whatever preconceptions I'd build up around it, but still, it was nice enough. I'd eat it again. Unless there was something more interesting on the menu.

So, that brings us back to the hotel, where I decided that I was going to finish writing my post about Harris and then start that blog I'd been thinking about for a while. Hi!

Here be dragons.