A Scottish Magical Mystery

Mystery coach, North Uist, Outer Hebrides, Scotland

You come across the strangest things while walking in the Outer Hebrides. You can walk all day and not meet another soul, but then, parked up in the middle of the croft is a coach; I immediately start wondering how it got there.

My theory is that a party of tourists from St Albans came to the islands one July and parked up in a grassy field for a picnic. Little did they know that it wasn’t to be their picnic, but that they would be eaten alive by the locals, in a plot lifted from a low budget horror movie. It is a known fact that the midges are at their most bloodthirsty in July.

If you had to think up a story of how these coaches end up empty in the middle of nowhere, what would you come up with? I will not accept answers like: “The crofter saw the old coach on ebay for £4.99 and couldn’t resist it, so bought it and put it there until he thought of a use for it.” Does placing a coach in places like these benefit or degrade the environment?

To travel to Chamonix, from Brussels, I booked a seat on a Eurolines coach, boarding by Gare du Nord. One of the main advantages of travelling by bus, is the low carbon footprint. Buses are generally light and do not use much fuel per person. They can also be quite cheap. I noted that the tickets from Brussels to Chamonix start at 9 Euros one way, shame mine wasn’t quite that cheap. I actually paid 90 Euros return, but had no extra fees for baggage etc.

I departed the Euro lines bus station at 18h00 on Sunday, after checking in a good sized bag with another in a snowboard bag. From what I read on the website for Eurolines Belgium, they don’t accept skis and snowboards, but the crew stowed mine in the baggage locker. Just don’t go turning up expecting them to accept your winter sports equipment in Belgium. If you are travelling from the UK then it is no problem. It all boils down to the fact that each country has a different coach operator badged as Eurolines operating their part of Europe. The journey was uneventful. We drove out of Brussels and on to Lille in France, a DVD was shown as we left Brussels, then another DVD on the leg from Lille to Paris.
Most of the passengers alighted at Paris and new passengers boarded, some with skis in carry bags. It was now about 11h00, so no more DVD’s were played. The coach then travelled down the Autoroutes headed for Geneva, but stopping for a break every two hours or so. Fortunately the coach was half empty so everyone had two seats each to try top get comfortable on for the night. I did manage to sleep in a number of unusual positions before waking after about half an hour each time.
As we went through the Jura, I noticed that the scenery looked very white, I was having difficulty making out why as I had removed my contact lenses for the night. It soon became apparent that it was snowing heavily. The bus stopped at the border at Switzerland and all passports were checked. There was a short stop at Geneva and then we headed back for France and Chamonix.

Chamonix, my destination

It was just getting light as we entered the Chamonix valley. It looked magnificent with its new covering of fresh snow. The coach had difficulty with the build up of snow on the streets of Chamonix, but managed to get to the bus stop outside the railway station.

I was tired most of Monday and slept really well on Monday night. Would I travel by coach again? Yes, in fact I have to on my return leg. It would be good to find some of those 9 euro seats and may well look out for them.