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What a contrast to yesterday!

Today, I’m taking the ferry back to the main island. The ferry terminal is super far from the center though, so I have to take two buses, and the whole trip took an hour. But that’s alright, the sun is shining again today (!), and I got to finally take a double decker bus (they are in every big British cities, not just London!)

A bit of waiting, and we embark on the Stena Line Superfast ferry, and this time I managed to secure a seat at the front window, allowing me to take plenty of pictures of the Belfast bay, and of the ever closer Scottish coast. The boat enters the wide Loch Ryan, to dock in the small port of Cairnryan, an outpost of Stranraer. There is a bus to Glasgow waiting to depart, but, ah!, I’m interrailing bitches, so I’ll take the bus to Stranraer and then the trains to Ayr and Glasgow.

Oh, if I knew…

Now the bus to Stranraer was rather a coach (that’s a long-distance bus, frenchies), you know, the ones I hate so much. But this one was again very comfortable, and also only half an hour long, with some chill road along Loch Ryan. Am I starting to like the bus?

I have a couple hours to kill in Stranraer, so I go for a short walk around this cute village, climbed a bit to have views on the Loch, and went grocery shopping. I think wearing my daybag always in front of me is gonna be the new meta. It’s too complicated to keep food on the front pocket of my backpack (I lost a pack of chips last week!).

Then I went to the train station, as the weather was starting to darken. Oh lord. It’s situated at the tip of a peer, like you’re going to take a boat. Except everything is deserted, and blasted by the wind. The port is desolated, seemingly abandonned for years. I walk along a road, closed off by high fences, toward a station that looks more like a hangar. A train is there, but I can’t see any soul. It was a scene well worth of a movie.

The station is opened though, so I sit in the waiting room, and do just that. At some point a station employee comes back at her desk and ve me hello from afar. After an hour of waiting, I go on the platform, and there’s still no other passengers. Which is kinda cool in a way. But still, I start to doubt, and ask the employees if it’ll be this train to Ayr.

« But there are no trains here since October. Didn’t the lady told you? »

…

No, why an employee working at the INFORMATION desk would INFORM someone who is very clearly waiting in a train station waiting room half a kilometer from any civilization that there are NO TRAINS?

Aaaaaaaaaah!

Well, there is a replacement bus, leaving in an hour. I check the connections, and I can still make it to Glasgow. Well, another hour of waiting. Now outside it’s pitch black, and raining like crazy. There was even a short hailstorm.

The bus came, and we ride what I can only imagine as an epic road along the East coast of Loch Ryan and then the Atlantic. I am so mad to not have done this by daylight!

In Ayr, I take a short train ride to the next town of Prestwick (very underwhelming for the 20th train of the adventure), where thankfully there’s only 10 min of waiting in the freeeeezing wind.

Finally, I’m on the last train to Glasgow. It’s very much past sunset when I get here at 9 PM, so I don’t get to see much of the city. Five minutes before reaching the hostel, it starts to rain heavily, to end up that day in the only suitable manner. I check in at the hostel, soaking wet, but I fight fire with fire with a much needed hot shower.