Stornoway Road Trip 2025: The Journey Up

Recently, I went away with mother_bones and cosmolinguist to Scotland. This is a roughly annual trip to see V's son L who lives up there. He works in a hotel in Stornoway, and can only get time off out of season, so we usually go up in mid to late September after most of the cruise ships have stopped. Between the last ferry sailing from Ullapool to the island being about 5pm, the 8-10 hour journey and V's difficulty with mornings, it takes us two days to get up there and two days to get back.

On the way up, we planned to stop off in Stirling, in a hostel which had a room for 3 adults. We got stuck in a very long tailback after a lorry had shed its load, so I can now say that I've had a nap in the fast lane of the M6. This meant we got to Stirling later than planned, and had takeout delivered to our hostel. E and I went to explore the town, making our way up to the castle despite the late hour, enjoying the dark hilly streets. We stopped off for a pint in The Portcullis at the castle, and spotted the looming silhouette of the Star Pyramid which deserves a future look.

The morning after, we drove out of Stirling past The National Wallace Monument but didn't stop there. After a couple of hours driving we broke for lunch at the Ralia Cafe, a traditional haunt for us. I took a photo of E standing by the metal Highland Cow statue outside. I picked up a leaflet for the Highland Folk Museum in the next town, just off our route, and we stopped for a while to inspect a number of rebuilt and recreated buildings in a field, including a traditional Hebridean blackhouse. Weirdly, we ran into some Mancunians who recognised me and E from the Queer Kiki drinks on Thursday which we've only attended twice!

We hit our big snag as we were on the road between Inverness and Ullapool - the evening ferry was cancelled with about an hour's notice. This left us stranded with nowhere to sleep, along with a few hundred other people. We tried phoning around hotels and B&Bs in Ullapool itself but everywhere was booked out. Eventually I found a hotel in Strathpeffer, almost as far back as Inverness, where we could stay for the night. We grabbed fish and chips and a pint in Ullapool, then doubled back for an hour's driving before collapsing in bed...