RIDING THE RAILS

Your article on rail travel for sporting holidays in Scotland [Action stations, August issue] reminded me of our trip on the Hogwarts Express on the West Highland Line over Rannoch Moor, a wild and most desolate spot in the rain and gloom.

The station at Corrour is not much more than a platform 10 miles from the nearest road, let alone habitation. I saw a young female rambler leave the train and disappear into the mist. Thoughts of what dire consequence might befall her led to my ‘sister’ Carla writing a romantic mystery novel as the heroine discovered ‘the Hidden Glen’.

In my earlier book, Shaggy Dog Stories, I recorded the story of the sporting traveller arriving at such a halt to be met by the gillie. In his days as a gillie in the highlands of Scotland, Tom was often asked to meet guests at the local railway station and bring them up to the big house.

The station was no more than a platform that served the isolated rural hamlet. Tom sat on the platform bench and lit his pipe and Spot lay at his side. The train duly arrived and the stranger alighted rather warily, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. “Excuse me. This is Glen Fardoon, isn’t it?” he enquired of Tom. “Oh arr, this be Glen Fardoon all right, but it’s a good hour’s walk to the village,” advised Tom.

“Don’t you think it would have been more convenient to have the station near the village?” enquired the gent.

“Oh arr, we thought o’ that but decided it were a better idea to have it next to the railway line.”

But if one wanted to arrive in style, then alighting from the train and boarding a steam launch to sail along the loch to the house was only surpassed by the Admiral of the Channel Fleet who parked his fleet in Duart Bay opposite Torosay Castle on the Isle of Mull for a few days’ shooting. A watercolour in the castle depicts the scene.

Charles Parkes, by email