Wanderlust Travel Awards 2009: Top Rail Journey
Wanderlust team | Issue 102 | 102 march 2009
West Highland Line, Glasgow-Mallaig, Scotland
Scotland’s West Highland Line doesn’t blazon itself as boldly as some of the self-avowed Great Train Journeys it overhauled in this new category – and perhaps that’s why it won.For the Glasgow-Mallaig line only inveigles itself into your affections stealthily.
Although in summer you can ride on the photogenic Jacobite Express steam engine (from Fort William to Mallaig), the rest of the year it’s a humdrum ScotRail affair which crawls out of Glasgow without much fanfare or initial promise. But as the city suburbs fade away, the fun begins: Loch Lomond swings alongside, and then the Highland junction of Crianlarich and the deer-pocked void of Rannoch Moor.
At Fort William comes the miraculous run to the west coast. Skirting lochs, larch and shaggy Highland cattle, the line soon hugs Loch Eil – where Bonnie Prince Charlie landed to rally his troops in 1745 – before crossing the 21-arch viaduct at Glenfinnan (well known to Harry Potter fans).
Now the landscape soars around you on all sides, the train trundling between gigantic tumbles of rock, before hitting the coast, teasing you with views of the sonorous isles of Eigg, Muck and Rum, and finally emerging, nonchalantly, beside the pier at Mallaig. In a few hours you’ve been served up some of Scotland’s finest and wildest scenery – and you haven’t even got your boots wet.
A footnote: one reader was more concerned about the departure point than the journey. Their nomination? ‘Coventry to anywhere’.
Rankings
- West Highland Line, Glasgow-Mallaig, Scotland 104 votes
- Cuzco-Puno/Lake Titicaca, Peru 80 votes
- Cuzco-Machu Picchu, Peru 62 votes
- Trans-Siberian 48 votes
- Eurostar 46 votes / Rocky Mountaineer, Western Canada 46 votes
- Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (‘Toy Train’), India 32 votes
- TranzAlpine, Christchurch-Greymouth, New Zealand 28 votes
- Orient Express 26 votes
- Devil’s Nose, Ecuador 22 votes
- The Ghan, Darwin-Adelaide, Australia 22 votes
>>See the rest of the award winners here.