We arrived in Fort William, parked our rental car on a very steep slope, and checked into our hotel. I think I’d imagined it to be a bit nicer, like some cosy guest house, but it wasn’t, it seemed furnished like an old office building, and was spartan to say the least. There was a sizeable colony of mould on the ceiling. The shower in our tiny bathroom was also unbearably hot to the touch, and would not go any colder than the insides of a new McDonalds apple pie (which if you’ve ever had one of those, you’ll know why it says “caution: HOT” on the sleeve). We had the front desk staff come up to see if it could be fixed, and they fiddled about and turned it on, to the same temperature, and touching it momentarily with their finger they said they thought it was fine. It definitely wasn’t. So no showers on this two night stay, unless you want to be scalded. So I dubbed the hotel “Faulty Showers”, and now I can’t remember the actual name, so it’s just Faulty Showers. The view from the bedroom was nice, overlooking the hills and the church of St. Andrews. We were in Fort William because (a) we were going on a very special trip on the Jacobite Steam Train the next day, and (b) this is really the best place to stay to explore the Highlands, being the biggest town for quite a way. I didn’t really warm to Fort William as a town. Great connections, some good shops (it had a good Tesco Metro close to our hotel, for sandwiches and supplies – ie, Irn Bru and Tunnocks Teacakes, which we brought onto the Jacobite with us). Dinner options were a little limited, because this being the main hiking and Highlands hub it’s where everyone stays, so they all go out for dinner at the same time, and food is expensive. One place we saw it was eighteen quid for a burger. We had a decent Indian meal on our first evening there; I was surprised to see “Haggis Naan” on the menu; I don’t even know how that works. The pubs didn’t look as inviting as I’d have expected, the best one looked like the Ben Nevis, but on this evening it didn’t exactly exude the Highland pub atmosphere I’d imagined, mostly tired hikers and tables of empty glasses, while some of the other pubs on the main pedestrianized drag seemed a little bit, well, ‘English lager lad’, doorways spilling with middle-aged English men and women aggressively smoking and vaping and swearing, so I gave them a miss. Around the rest of the town centre, teenage youths ambled up and down with an air of boredom, and hikers tiredly made their way in small crowds to whatever expensively priced and cheaply run hotel they were pitstopping at. This is the end of the Great Highland Way, but also the start of the Great Glen Way which goes up by Loch Ness, and of course it’s right at the foot of Ben Nevis, Britain’s highest mountain, which was completely shrouded from view by Scottish mist. the sketch I did above, early in the morning, was the Memorial to Donald Cameron of Lochiel, with the Duncansburgh Church behind it. As I sketched, a man passed by walking back to his hotel and said to me (in a southern English accent), “It would be quicker to take a photograph you know,” and just walked on. Something in his tone was so dismissive, it irked me. I just glared nonplussed as he hiked off towards his hotel, but in my mind I thought, “ooh, you’re my enemy now.”

Still, what a view over Loch Linnhe at sunset. After our day on the Jacobite, and after dinner (which due to the lack of available options at the time we ate at the Wetherspoons, not exactly my first choice, but it tasted fine), I decided not to go back to Faulty Showers and stayed out sketching. Sunset here is even later than in Glasgow, and it wasn’t raining, so I sat by the Loch which was pretty peaceful and drew the lovely colours. We really were on the other side of the world now, it felt like. Even though I’m from Britain, for a Londoner this feels like a million miles from home, let alone for a Californian. The Highlands really are lovely, and there’s so much of it to explore, we were only seeing a little bit. Satisfied with my sketch, I turned around and drew the scene behind me, the Highland Hotel. Perhaps a tad nicer (and a wee bit more expensive) than Faulty Showers, this looks like the place to be. It was the sunset-kissed clouds that drew me in though. And I am sure Ben Nevis is around there somewhere, but he wasn’t showing his face. I went back to our hotel and went to be (after watching with my son a few sketches from the old mostly-Scottish sketch show from the early 90s, ‘Absolutely’, which I used to love, because the ‘Stonybridge’ sketches had popped into my head while we were driving north the day before).

There was a really nice bookshop in Fort William though that we spent a bit of time in, and got some lovely prints. I nearly got a book to teach myself how to speak Gaelic, but I know I’m probably not going to do that, unless I take a class. It’s a lovely language though, and you will see it on so many road signs up here. Fort William is called An Gearasdan in Gaelic, and about 7% or so of the population speak it. While this is the main town for this part of the Highlands, it was built to, you know, put the Highlands people down. Originally established by Oliver Cromwell to keep the local Clan Cameron in line, it was later named Fort William after King William III who built the fort to control the local Highlands clans, who over the next century would rise up in Jacobite rebellion several times. We heard a lot about the Jacobites during this part of the trip. There was also a really nice visitor centre in Fort William where I got some postcards, magnets, tea coasters, because I am a tourist and you can never have too many of those.

I did get up early on our last morning there and draw the church of St. Andrews, which was close to Faulty Showers. The gateway was so pretty and covered in moss, which I didn’t end up colouring in, and the kirkyard had a lot of character (and probably a lot of characters). I was up to get some nice pastries (and Tunnocks Teacakes) from the little Tesco. I was also, if I’m honest, kind of hoping to see that English guy who had made the irksome comment the morning before. I’m not saying I had spent a lot of the day thinking of what my comeback should have been, like George Costanza (like “yeah, well the jerk store called, and they said it would be quicker for you to just bugger off mate”, yeah not that good really) but I was perfecting my dirty look. He was probably already halfway up Ben Nevis by now. At which point I thought, ooh I should walk past him trying to climb Ben Nevis, all out of breath and red-faced, and say, “it would be quicker for you to take a photo!” or something similarly witty. However that wouldn’t be true, because Ben Nevis just would not show itself to us, hiding behind all that mist. Rather than wait for the mist to clear, I determined it would be quicker to look at a picture of Ben Nevis on Wikipedia, and we left Fort William and its faulty showers behind us.