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West Highland Rail N to S or S to N?

This will seem like a naive question - but whenever I read about the West Highland train, the description is from south to north. Does it matter? Will we miss something being revealed to us if we take it going south?

We were going to take it both ways but now we are considering a trip traveling by train to Inverness from Edi and curling around to the west to visit Skye and then south to Mull/Iona - to Glasgow.

Our goal is to find some good birding and hiking within range of those places. So far we have the Scottish seabird center on the Firth of Forth, puffins from Mull/Treshness, and something yet unknown from Skye. We would like to see some good fresh water birds but haven't found a place we could get to without a car. Loch Leven sounds wonderful - but hard to get to.

Ideas?

Posted by
1642 posts

It does not really matter, but the southern end of the line is the Glasgow commutter network and the line takes a while to get through that.

Posted by
5835 posts

It's more traditional to walk from Milngavie just north of Glasgow, then take the train back from Fort William to Glasgow.