UKC

Hi,

Planning on walking this and trying to work out the options for getting back from Fort William by public transport.

Will need to get back to either Milngavie (the start) or Edinburgh, whichever works out easiest/quickest.

Suggestions, please?

Get a direct train from FW to Glasgow Queen St (just under 4hrs, cheapest looks like it's about £22.50) then either transfer onto another direct line out to Milngavie (25mins) or through to Edinburgh (45-ish mins)

Edit: if you arrive back in Queen St. after 8pm, you'll need to walk the 5 minutes to Glasgow Central to get a direct line to M'gavie. (If you go from QS you'll need to change at Partick) There are 2 trains an hour from Central or QS to M'gavie, but the Edinburgh train is more frequent.

How are you doing sorting accommodation en route?

https://www.citylink.co.uk/

It's all very well-connected, if a bit slow, by train. You can do the entire thing, return, by train from Edinburgh without much more effort than driving to Milngavie/Glasgow to begin.

Rome2rio is a good site for this sort of thing.

https://www.rome2rio.com/map/Fort-William/Milngavie

<cough>

I haven't done the journey since before the pandemic, but the train journey between Glasgow and Fort William was always a pleasure - especially when travelling north. Lots to see: Glasgow slowly turning into countryside, the Clyde, the gathering mountains, Rannoch and views of parts of the WHW. For some reason I always enjoyed the break at Crianlarich where they divide the train so that half of it can go to Oban - not something that happens much on journeys further south.

The WHW can be a fun social walk, if thats what you want. Enjoy.

Baggage Freedom (who can transport your bags each day) do a return trip from FW to either Miln or Glasgow for £40. You donlt need to use them for bag transfer to use this facility.

https://baggagefreedom.com/product/freedom-returns/

I have no affiliation other than I am using them for my WHW trip this year for baggage transfer.

I did it last year. We parked in Milngavie and then got the train back from Fort William. We actually got off at Dumbarton then got a taxi across to Milngavie. 

This seemed easier than getting back to Milngavie by train. 

So I'm guessing you didn't think much of the suggestions you've been given? Is it me,  am I expecting too much these days to get some sort of thanks or acknowledgement for the help that I and others have gone out of our way and offered? 

Apologies, I forgot about this post as the initial frenzy of organisation on the trip died down once accommodation was arranged.

Yes, thanks for the suggestions - train to Milngavie and then back from FW to Glasgow looking most likely.

I usually put "Thanks in advance" in the OP, but missed it on this one

No worries, I'd wondered if you'd maybe had an accident or something but had see you'd posted on several other threads since, so knew that wasn't the reason.

Best of luck for the trip,  I hope you'll be avoiding midge season!