kyle of lochalsh to where ?

    We had spent so long trying to decide if we could get our walk done on skye the previous day that it had left zero time to decide where to go once we left skye , the only thing we knew for sure was that we wanted to see the scenery of the kyle line from inside a train we had drove past and over this line various times thinking it would make a lovely train journey ,

but we didnt know where we wer going to get off the train our original plan of walking some mountains from near train station , was proving logistically problematic to say the least in our limited time scale of a week especially now here in the highlands where the winter public transport system limits the choices even further , after hours of discussuion on our choices we were still knowhere near to making a decision ! so i wrote 4 possible destinations of stations picked from a railway map onto a bit of paper, folded them into 4 seperate pieces and one was picked out decision made !

it was going to be nairn tonight now we need to research accomdation !
        The views out the train window on the kyle line were amazing it was every bit and more as scenic as i thought it would be , and the weather was lovely strange how skye seemed to be having its own little micro bad climate at present, just your luck i suppose and we were certainly lucky with the views out the train window which we stayed on for over 3hrs untill inverness which is the end of the kyle line, we had to change trains for nairn so we had a walk along the high street and a beer in the railway hotel and researched where to stay . we came up with a small hotel called braeval which had the camra distric pub of the year for 7 consecutive years bar attached to the hotel .so ideal for me plenty real ales . the train journey from inverness to nairn was only one stop while looking out the train window i was surprised at how many geese were in the fields next to the line ,once off the train it was an easy walk to the hotel through town , but they didnt have a room for us and sugested their sister hotel along the street called the havelock ,which worked out fine as the room was nice and the view was good over toward the seashore ,where we went for a pleasant walk before dinner it was sunset (dusk) and all those geese i had seen in the fields during the day were flying over in wave after wave of noisy skein of geese ( gaggle on the ground)  and technicaly it was wedge after wedge not wave after wave ! there was too many to count ive never seen so many geese , we had dinner and some beers in the bandstand bar which is the camra recomended pub of the braeval hotel  . and then as a pleasant surprise our hotel bar was having their quiz night at 9pm which we joined in with ,
      

  we spent much of the night and all early morning trying to decide where to go next , we had by now almost ruled out any chance of getting anymore hillwalking done , and after much discusion decided we would just stay along the coast at findhorn in the hippy eco village if possible , so we had breakfast in a nairn greasy spoon , and headed off to the train station only to see the intended train depart the station ! the next one would be over an hour away so because we had time to kill and didnt want to leave our bags we had a look at the train map again , and for some reason looked at mull and one of us said what about mull can we do that ! ? the distance from nairn to the island of  mull is not only long but very tricky to get to one coast to the other via a few mountain ranges hard enough on roads but by rail ! yes we decided to go for it and maybe we could walk up ben more on mull , the best option to make that journey is train to inverness and change to a bus for fort william ,our highland rover ticket allows this bus transfer ,Then its possible to get either bus or train from fort willliam to oban where the mull ferry leaves from , we made enquires at the bus station in invernes and there was a 1pm bus that should get us to fort william in 2hrs roughly so we waited for that bus , unfortunately there had been a tragedy a young boy had killed himself in a car crash near speen brig so the normal route the bus went was shut  we would have to go the longer route and it would be 3 hrs on the bus , we got seats right up the front and the scenery was good on the little back roads we went through ,the roads where tight and a driver came around the bend too fast in his van with not enough space on either side and our wing mirrors colided and smashed the police happened to be at the scene and exchanging personal details seemed to take forever for our driver , we casused a fair old tailback in either direction , and eventually got into fort william at 15:50 ,which was perfect timing to see the jocobite steam train drop of the passengers and reverse up the line ,

       we had an hour to kill before our bus so we walked up the high street to my favourite bar in fort william the grog and gruel for two pints of beer , we got a sandwich for the bus from morristons and were back on the road ,

       its a lovely road between fort william and oban and it takes just over an hour , i kept watching cyle route number 78 weave back in forth of the road and i would like to plan a cycleon that route one day ,But maybe the beer and sandwich wasnt such a good idea it just meant i was needing the loo because as soon as the bus stopped  i had to find a bar to get  the loo , It worked out fine though as we used the bar wifi to check out sleeping options , we would not be getting to oban tonight the last ferry was gone , we ended up staying at the regent hotel which was cheap and cheerfull , reception wanted £65 for a night but i booked it online for £59 the lift to the room said maximum 6 people, i had to reverse in with my backpack on so i could hit the 5th floor button

! it was functional though and in a great location , we went out and had a lovely dinner in cuan mor restaurant on oban front they had nice ales and a tasty quirky menu and loads of helpfull nice saff ,