Breathtaking! My Scenic Journey from Fort William to Oban with West Coast Motors.

One of my most memorable trips for many reasons! Please join me as I make my way from Fort William to Oban on the scheduled 918 bus service between the two towns. It’s operated by West Coast Motors on behalf of Citylink and it’s more of a coach really than a bus.

I’ll show you the interior of the coach and tell you a little bit about the company who have a major role to play in this part of the world when it comes to ferrying passengers around. I’ll tell you how much it cost and of course we’ll be admiring the simply breathtaking scenery on the way.

Thank you very much for watching. I really appreciate your support and encouragement on this channel. It helps enormously. If you enjoyed the video, please leave me a like or maybe even consider subscribing to the channel.

As always guys, cheers for now.

Mark

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📖Chapters

00:00 – Introduction
00:30 – Fort William to Ballachulish Bridge
05:50 – A look at the interior
06:48 – Onwards toward Appin
08:24 – Appin to Connel Bridge
12:47 – Connel Bridge to Oban
15:21 – Summary

Good morning guys from Fort Williams Scotland one of my favorite countries in the world I’m not staying here for long I’m heading down to Oben and I’m catching a bus the 918 series R by West Coast Motors and I tell you what it’s supposed to be a really nice bus this

And if I sit on the right hand side I’m going to get some fantastic views as well it’s not a bad day for it so why don’t you come with me I’m going to head down to the bus station it’s only about 5 minutes away and yeah I’ll catch you on the bus The Fort William bus station is pretty much right outside the railway station here if you’ve just arrived by train walk out of the side doors and it’ll bring you onto this street and then you just walk along the handy sheltered path towards Morrison’s he’ll come to the

Stances of which there are eight now there’s the digital departure border fixed to the wall here and that tells you the service number destination time of departure and which stance or stances the bus leaves from yeah head on to 7 and 8 and we’ll we’ll see where we go

The bus is already here by the looks of it so let’s go have a look yeah my bus the 918 Fort William toin service operated by West Coast Motors was already waited for me at stance 8 okay so here we go and here is our 16

What’s that 8 years old isn’t it but it looks quite smart here we go West Coast Motors on the side and here we go stany 7 L and the information up there which confirms what um that um departure board told us a few minutes ago so yeah 12:30 about um

10 12 night so yeah just going to wait for the driver to show off and um get on board I’m looking forward to this and with about 10 minutes to go until departure our friendly driver showed up and we all boarded the bus I put my ticket on my phone about 15

Minutes before this using the City Link website I thought it might be cheaper that way but it didn’t seem to make any difference when I asked right it’s probably not on there cuz I’ve been booked to the B yeah an hour ago well this was this was printed at 9:00 this

Morning I don’t know if it’s any cheaper doing it that way or not H I think you do yeah it’s well no not really it’s 11 40 sometimes to do sometimes yeah no that’s all for to thank you very much thank you very much £140 adult single

Was the price I paid which I think was reasonable and yeah you wait until you see the scenery it will absolutely blow you away and doesn’t it make a difference having a nice welcoming driver in charge I chose a seat in the second row on the right hand side and

Settled into the journey the Caledonian sleeper carriages from my earlier trip up here were across the way and yeah if you haven’t see my video on that yet I’ll link to it here H quite a poor experience that was I’m sorry to say

Now we were soon on our way I give a two fingered wave goodbye to the sleeper coaches as we turn the corner and yeah notice all the expensive looking EV charging points here and then we’re on to the main a882 heading Southwest passing the Old Fort where I did the introduction to this

Video from and lock Linny on our right and what do you think of Fort William it’s handy for the mountains isn’t it and you got the line up to M for Sky I’m not sure I can spend a week here to be honest but yeah what about you let me

Know in the comments below so West Coast Motors then they’ve been around since 1921 would you believe owned by the Craig family with their headquarters in cample toown Aral which isn’t the most Central of locations is it but they’re a pretty big operation with over 270 buses and coaches I will

Be referring to our vehicle as a coach from here on in they started out running a scheduled service between Campell toown and tarbard back then and have been continually extending the network in this area of Scotland ever since now when the Scottish bus industry was deregulated in 1986 the newly formed

Scottish City Link coaches limited asked the West Coast Motors to operate the Campbell town to Glasgow service on their behalf in the familiar blue and yellow livery which is synonymous with City Link to this day isn’t it now 10 years later they were operating as far

As in vaness and had built new premises right in the center of Obin after acquiring several smaller but similar companies in the ’90s up to the present day we now see them in this very striking Livery and yeah their vehicles are as you would expect a very familiar

Site on the roads in this part of the world and what a pleasure it is to be traveling down one of these roads on a day like today now we’re still on the a82 and it’s taking us as far as balish Bridge which crosses the Narrows between

Lo Lev and Loch Linny now I’m going to give a big shout out here to Bill Mitchell over on Twitter or X or whatever it’s called this week and he told me how to pronounce this name so if it’s wrong yeah please blame him I’m probably already struggling with some of

The place names in this video to be honest but uh yeah I’m really looking forward to reading all your Corrections in the comments below and opened in 1975 the bridge replaced the bolish ferry and is a steel Trust Construction with fabricated box cords according to Wikipedia the total length is 964 4

Ft the 82 continues on here towards Glenco Lo Lan and finally Glasgow but we’re heading west on the a828 and passing back under the bridge we’ve just traversed the scenery is just fantastic isn’t it and I’ll tell you what I bet you can get some really really strong

Currents in the water here at times so about half an hour into the journey and yeah let’s have a quick look at the interior of our coach we have a soft two-tone headrest here with the irizar name detailed at the bottom the back is solid enough with a well cushioned lower

Section we’ve even got a recline lever here and of course seat belt provision the seat back features a flip down table which was clean and with a cup holder too and there is a pouch below for all your stuff we’ve even got a foot rest and leg

Room I say is quite acceptable between the seats is WSB provision and it worked above your head is small bag storage with integrated individual air vents reading lights and all the usual stuff there you would expect on a coach to be honest and yeah overall this was a very comfortable

Ride and although we’re on a different road now we’re still traveling alongside Lo Lin and the scenery well it just gets better and better it’s 44 mi from Fort williiam to and our Journey’s timetable to take 1 hour and 33 minutes we’re about 15 mi into the trip now so yeah

Enjoy some of the views with me as we head towards appin the tiny village with a bloody History Ain scene of a brutal assassination back in 1752 known thereafter as the appin murder in the aftermath of the Jacoby rising of 1745 Colin Roy Campbell was the government appointed factor to the forfeited lands of the clan Stewart and as such ordered several Mass evictions of the clan replacing them with Clan

Campbell of course now on his way to another Mass eviction he was killed by a single shot in the back a figure in dark clothing and carrying a musket was seen riding off into the distance well Chief suspect alen bre Stewart run off somewhere but yeah another Steward

James was accused of aiding and betting the murderer although he protested his innocence that James was hanged on a specially commissioned jibbit backed by the narrows at bolish 18 months he was left swinging as a warning to other clans against Rebellion at that point only his skeletal remains were left yeah

To this day though no evidence has ever been found to say he was involved and we’re crossing lck cran Now by means of the KGAN Road Bridge I say Road Bridge because this used to be a railway Viaduct that carried the calendar and openen Railway Branch line

Back to bolish the line closed in 1966 but the bridge remains and the supporting columns were reutilized in 1999 when it opened to road traffic a fighter jet passes overhead as we now make our way along the shores of lck cran towards another of our landmarked sites on this route the conell Bridge As we approach Connell Bridge open airport is on our right you can’t really see much from here to be honest but hean Air Services Limited operate scheduled flights to Co Colin say tyi and Isa along with Scenic flights if you’ve got the money open in 1903 Connor Bridge

Constructed of Steel also carried the calendar and open Railway to bolish and it crosses the the narrowest part of Lo etive here at the Falls of Laura again look at the Tidal currents in the waters below even stronger here by the looks of it a roadway was added to the bridge in

1914 alongside the railway line though it was too narrow for both to cross at the same time they’re solely used by road traffic since 1966 again as a result of the closure of the branch line it’s still too narrow for anything other than one single Lane hence the need for

Traffic lights at either end now we now turn off onto the a85 passing what’s got to be one of the most scenic bus shelters anywhere in the world with L MCN Bay to our right we’ve got about 5 miles to run at this point and looking back over the bay you

Can just about make out the steel gers of of the Connor Bridge we’ve just crossed as a light aircraft climbs away from OB airport must be great weather for flying today a couple more things to tell you about our coach firstly it meets the legal requirement to have a bay which

Can accommodate a standard reference wheelchair as you can see here and secondly there is no Wi-fi board the coach it’s not advertised to be fair so yeah don’t expect it and thirdly there is a toilet which in this case was situated towards the rear of the coach I

Must apologize here because ordinarily I would go and check it out but yeah to be honest I was so engrossed by the scenery I just ran out of time but yeah I am assured it worked so although this is only a 1 and a half hour Journey if you

Need to go you can do and lastly cycle provision I think you can probably put your bike in the luggage hold if there’s room and it’s obviously at your own risk but there are no racks on the front or rear of the vehicle at this moment in time I’m sure that’s something West

Coast Motors could look at doing as I reckon there would be considerable demand for it in this part of the world so as you can see we are now coming into openen the gateway to the Isles and lots of connectivity here with the railway line down to Glasgow and numerous

Faeries serving the islands off the West Coast but by the way you’ve also got a Costa a weather spoon and a fat-faced clothes Shopper what more could you want and the bus station is right in the middle of town and we pulled onto our stance 3 minutes early I gathered my

Stuff waitting for some people to get off before thanking the driver and collecting my bag from the luggage hold thank you very much I paused for a minute just to look back at our vehicle not bad for a bus service this was it and then I made my way over

The road to a bench overlooking the harbor where yeah I just took a minute or two to Su up the journey right guys Oben and yeah just got here on the 918 from Fort William I tell you what that scenery was just absolutely breathtaking wasn’t it

Fantastic day for I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did because honestly I’ve probably driven that road a few times in the past but you never get the chance to enjoy it do you when you when you’re driving so much so I’m really glad I

Chose it let me know what you thought in the comments Below guys honestly if there are more Scottish Roots like this one then your suggestions are more than welcome because I would love to try some more thank you very much for watching I shall catch you on another adventure

Soon I’m sure and as always guys cheers for now