Autumn Highlander - Day Two (Saturday) - The Great Highland Railway Journey

We were picked up at the hotel by our coach at 9am and taken to the station.  A little later, we left Inverness for the incredible train journey up to the Kyle of Lochalsh on the Kyle line.  This trip takes you past farmland, heavily forested areas, mountains, lochs, rivers and the sea.  We regularly saw deer in the veldt and sometimes they were very close to the train line.    The final section of the Kyle line needed 29 bridges, cut through 31 sections of solid rock at an average cost of 20,000 pounds sterling per mile (remember this was built in Victorian times, so that was a lot of money). 

Kyle of Lochalsh (on the West coast of Scotland) means “strait of the Foaming Lake” and sits at the entrance to Loch Alsh, opposite is the small village of Kyleakin on the Isle of Skye.   At one point the only way to get onto the Isle of Skye was by ferry but now there is a bridge, which was built in 1995.  

The trip up to Kyle of Lochalsh was really beautiful, breathtaking scenery and the weather was kind to us - sunlight often streaming through the clouds onto a loch, or valley.   Most of the trees have now started to wear their autumn dresses and the colours were magnificent.

Blurry shot of the mountainside in one place we travelled through

Another spectacular Loch with an island in it

Kyle of Lochalsh

Our train parked at the end of the Kyle Line

The bridge to Isle of Skye

Views from the quayside

Looking across to Skye

A lady and a train

Another view over the water towards the Skye Bridge

Lunch was Fillet of Scottish Salmon poached together with fresh asparagus spears, served with dill and parsley buttered new potatoes and garden peas.

Dinner was:

Coquille St Jacques - or scallops

Roast sirloin of prime Scottish beef and all the trimmings - real Yorkshire Puddings - not Tescos!!

Sticky Toffee pudding

I've noticed that words like 'spectacular', 'wonderful', 'marvellous' keep cropping up with regular abandon ... superlatives just don't do this landscape justice, I'm afraid and neither do photos.  It's impossible from photos to get a full grasp of the landscape, as it's vast and changes all the time. Some of the photos may give the impression that it was very gloomy and grey but that's not the case, we had lovely weather, it wasn't cold - every now and then we had a few spots of rain but not enough to spoil any of the time we were in Bonnie Scotland. 

Next post will be about our trip to Dunrobin Castle and Thurso.