Friday, July 7, 2023 

In reality, the clouds that I use to justify my decision not to hike Ben Nevis today are probably very temporary, and indeed later in the day they part and reveal a perfect morning, but the fact is that when I wake up, I simply to not feel like hiking. So I decide not to. You don’t have to hike every single thing all the time to be a hiker. I just did my trail. I’ll come back to hike the highest mountain in the UK some day. 

We have a very slow morning, which consists of me drinking an entire French press of coffee (finally, a coffee maker I know how to use), writing, and reading. I feel an odd sense of readjustment. Mash is heading out to Oban today, the WHW is over and was entirely too short, and I don’t know how to transition now back into my non-trail, normal tourist self. 

I look up things to do around the area and zero in on the Jacobite Train, which is a steam train operated by West Coast Railways and was the model for the Hogwarts Express in the Harry Potter films. Indeed, the rail company provided the train that was used in the movies. Its most famous section of the route to Mallaig is the Glenfinnan Viaduct, that curved series of arches that majestically spans the hills near Loch Shiel. I know it’s a popular route, but I try to see if I can find tickets online. Nope. They appear to be sold out every day until after this weekend, every class. Bummer.

We decide to take a normal ScotRail train to Glenfinnan anyway, though, because there’s a trail that takes you to a viewpoint where you can see the Jacobite train passing, like the Hogwarts Express did in the films. As we’re about to get on our actual train, we see the Jacobite at the station, along with a sign reading “queue for tickets here.” That seems to imply that there are tickets remaining. No harm in asking, right? So I ask the worker if there are tickets left, and she says yes, for standard class, and it’s cash only. We have enough to cover it, and we gleefully abandon our original train and board the Jacobite. All aboard the Hogwarts Express! 

I’m absolutely giddy as we start the journey. It doesn’t even leave until 12:50, so we’re sitting there for a good 20 minutes. I’m nearly as excited as the kid a couple seats up who keeps talking about Harry Potter and the train.

Soon the conductor comes on, making a few announcements about safety and the history of the railway, and the whistle sounds, and we can hear the train chugging out of the station. Choo choo! Here we go! I’m a child again, thrilled to bits. 

On the way, we get a quick glimpse of a highland cow. Apparently, I missed the sight of one on the first day of the WHW, or so Mash told me, and I’ve been upset ever since that I never saw one. This is jut a quick glimpse, but it’s enough. Mom points and gasps, and sure enough, there’s a hairy coo right there, facing the train.

We cross over Neptune’s Ladder, a series of locks connecting two lochs. (There’s got to be a joke there.) There are people everywhere watching as the train passes, waving, taking photos and videos.

Soon we’re approaching the famous Glenfinnan Viaduct, which you see in the first two Harry Potter movies when the Hogwarts Express crosses it en route to the school. As we’re starting to go across the viaduct, I notice that my eyes are filling with tears, and then I am full out crying. I recognize this place from the series that WAS my childhood, and it strikes me how incredibly fortunate I am to be here. There are people everywhere near the bridge, some below, some on the hill up above, all waving at the train and recording its crossing. I wave back, crying. What a dream.

We make a quick stop at the Glenfinnan station, which is just long enough to take a spin through the museum and the on-train Harry Potter themed gift shop. Then it’s the rest of the journey to Mallaig. The drink trolley comes around and I get another Thistly Cross cider, which is *chef’s kiss.*

En route, we see another location that appeared in the Harry Potter films: the island that constitutes Dumbledore’s final resting place. It just looks magical and out of place, even without the context of the film. It’s covered in trees that slope gracefully and uniformly towards the water on one side. 

The rest of the journey is beautiful, tall mountains mixed with wide glens and bogs. We see the shore at one point, and then out to a few islands, including the very southern edge of the Isle of Skye, and then we are arriving at our destination, Mallaig. It’s a little seaside town that still has a very active fishing economy, ad we make sure to get some seafood before we leave. Mostly, we just walk around, popping into and out of shops, enjoying the blue sky day. 

The return journey is just as lovely. I have a tea this time, and get a better view of Dumbledore’s island, and appreciate the viaduct once again. I take in the sounds of the train and the vastness of this space. And then we’re back in Fort William. 

We take a spin through Morrison’s for a small dinner and snacks for tomorrow, heavily appreciating British shopping trolleys, which move in all directions, not just back and forth like dumb American ones. We also buy twelve bars of Scottish tablet, which is sort of like fudge except at least five times sweeter, to take back to friends. (Ostensibly.) We try to pop into some other little shops, but most are closed. So it’s a return to our amazing airbnb.

I decide I haven’t moved enough today, and I’ve still got distance on my mind, and I miss being on the trail, so I go for a run. It’s a perfect evening. Beautiful temperature, low light, quiet streets. I head out of Fort William the same way I came in, on the sidewalk along the West Highland Way. Then I wind up on a little path in the woods for a bit, and spot a bridge, and stand on it for a while, looking at the creek it spans. 

I’m here, seeing the mountains all around me and feeling really weird. I miss the West Highland Way. How? It was six days. Can you miss a trail so short? Maybe what I’m actually missing is being with Mash. Talking in the register of thru hikers. Laughing until I couldn’t breathe. Keeping the sense of a longer hike so alive. When you finish a hike, even a small one, what does the trail become? 

There’s that saying in the Camino world, that once you’ve been on the Camino, you’re always on the Camino. I feel that about my hikes, but I didn’t expect to feel it about this one.

We only hiked together for a few days, but I was really, really sad after saying goodbye to Mash last night. For that brief flash of time on the WHW I felt like that peeled-open, unfettered, early desert self again. Maybe it was because I didn’t hike with him on the PCT, so everything was new, the conversation rocketing like it does when you first meet another hiker. Maybe it’s because I regret not hiking with his group more on the PCT. Maybe this trip is going too fast, and I love these rainy islands far too much, and I dread returning to the excessive American world. Maybe I just can’t contain the beauty of it all. Maybe it’s the mountains. Maybe it’s everything. 

In any case, I feel a sense of loss, but it’s paired oddly with contentedness. It’s a little like how Mash said that what inspired him to do the PCT was reading Carrot Quinn’s post-trail blog post about how terrible it was to adjust to the “real” world after the trail. Feeling grief after an experience tells you how worthwhile that experience was in the first place: it was more real than anything. 

At the same time, I also feel enormously grateful. It is such a privilege to travel, and to even have these feelings in the first place. Today on the train, I kept trying to hold onto every little viewpoint, every little moment, and keep it in a box in my brain. Crying as we crossed over the Glenfinnan Viaduct, wondering how I got here, wondering at my fortune. I’m grateful to my parents for giving me the kind of life where I can see these things, hike as far as I can, make friends all over the world, love the mountains, weep on trains. I’m grateful to have been given adventure as an option. 

I make my way back to the apartment, Lord Huron’s “The Man Who Lives Forever” thundering in my ears. I love this world and I don’t want to leave it. Why can’t the story just go on forever? 

I fall asleep on the couch reading the end of Annihilation (finally) and drinking an incredible Loch Lomond brewery IPA. I can’t stop time, but I can do my best to soak in its little moments.