We had only one thing on the agenda for today--riding the Jacobite train from Fort William to Mallaig. Since Philip has to concentrate on driving and won't have much chance to see the scenery, we planned the train ride to give him a chance to relax, too. This seemed to be the best spot in our itinerary for a train ride, and it turned out to be a beautiful ride. We drove from the hotel and parked in the lot adjacent to the train station. This was one where we had to buy a ticket from a machine to leave on the dashboard while we were away. There are many different ways to pay for parking, and we have seen several already on this trip.

There are three or four trains that ply this route, and one of them was used in the Harry Potter films as Hogwarts Express. Although neither of us are big Harry Potter fans, we became fans for the day. It was fun. We had a table for two in the first class coach that I booked online several months ago. They wouldn't let us pick our seats, but we were guaranteed to have seats together. The price seems a bit high now; it was 58 pounds each for the return trip. The two towns are about forty miles apart, and the ride was about two hours each way. We passed through hilly countryside, small villages, beautiful shores of lochs, and several dark tunnels.

The coach we were in was the closest to the locomotive on the outbound ride, and when we went through the tunnels, the smoke and ash came in through the open windows. On the return trip, that did not happen as much because then we were the last coach of the train. While we were stopped in Mallaig, the locomotive moved around to the opposite end of the train. We did not see that operation. They do not have room for the train to make a u-turn in the Mallaig station.

In Mallaig we had about two hours to have lunch and look around the town. We ate at the Tea Garden Restaurant right in the middle of the town. It was busy, but they seemed prepared for the surge of visitors when the train arrived. We walked around some--out to the end of the main dock, but not much was going on, then to the west end of town past the police station and the library. The library was closed today.

During the return train trip, we were on the same side of the train which was a bit disappointing. I wanted to get a good photo of the Glenfinnan Viaduct, but it was on the opposite side from where we were sitting. I moved to the space between the coaches so I could see out a window for a picture. A couple of other people shared the one window with me and were very considerate in taking photos quickly then getting out of the way for the next person. The train slowed down a bit going over the viaduct giving us time to cycle through two rounds of each of us taking photos. The space was small and it was a bit of a dance to get in, shoot a couple of photos, and move away so someone else could do the same. It worked fairly well, and one of my photos is pretty good. It would have been better a few seconds earlier, but still not too bad.

When we got back to Fort William, we knew that we would need to check the car tires since the light was still on when we drove into town this morning. We had seen a Morrison's supermarket near the train station. That was the same brand that had a petrol station where we filled up in Inverness. Before getting in the car, we walked over to the station to see if they had an air pump and how to get to it. The stations there do a much better job than most of ours at directing the flow of traffic through the station. We knew that we couldn't go backwards, and we wanted to get it right on the first try.

We made it to the station and filled up even through the tank was down less that one fourth of the way. Again, we were able to fill the tank without prepaying and without using a credit card in the pump. When Philip went in to pay after pumping the gas, the clerk also gave him a voucher to use at the air compressor so we didn't need coins to make it work. We used the pressure gauge that was on the air hose to check the tires. One seemed a wee bit low at 26 psi, but that didn't seem like enough to set off the warning light. We added a bit of air to bring it up over 32. On the way back to the hotel, the warning light did not turn off. We will deal with it tomorrow.

We ate dinner in the hotel for the second time. The meal last night was just fine, and we do not see anything else within walking distance; we are finished driving for today.