Day 27 - A Ride Across the Highlands

Portree to Inverness

I have tried to avoid long distance coaches on this Land's End to John O'Groats journey of mine because the whole idea was to test local public transport to see if it really was possible to hop from one place to another all the way from Land's End to John O'Groats just by using the buses that ordinary commuters use.

However, it was soon apparent when I started planning my route that it's virtually impossible to catch a local bus from one Highland village to another for no other reason than there mostly aren't any. 

Take today, for example. Admittedly there are a few local bus services in and around Skye (I used one yesterday) and I could probably catch one to the mainland at Kyle of Lochalsh. But from there, I'd be totally stranded because there seems to be no bus service of any kind beyond Kyle, with one exception – the City Link long-distance express service to Inverness. The only realistic way of getting off the island and onto the road to Inverness, therefore, is to take the inter-city express.

Citylink bus Pic: Mike Brocklebank

It's not exactly what I want but at least I'm in experienced hands. City Link operates services linking most of the Scotland's major cities and providing many – and possibly most - Highland communities with an important connection to the outside world. In some respects, it's a slightly odd company in that it operates some 90 vehicles but actually owns only one of them. Instead, it relies on local coach operators to run the services on their behalf using their own vehicles but carrying the City Link livery. Ownership in the bus industry is rarely as straightforward as it seems and City Link is definitely a case in point.

The origins of City Link date back to 1985 but the story actually begins much earlier – in 1947, in fact, with the creation by Clement Attlee's Labour government of a British Transport Commission (BTC). This was a key part of Attlee's nationalisation programme and brought the big four railway companies, the docks, the inland waterways and more than 250 road haulage firms under government control. 

Transport Minister Barbara Castle MP

A year later, the huge Tilling Group, a giant of a bus operator which had been running bus services since 1850 when it built its first horse bus, sold its entire portfolio of 21 bus companies to the BTC. In fact the BTC already had a sizeable stake in Tillings thanks to interests it inherited from the railway companies. Now, Tilling was handing over its remaining share making the government a truly major player in the bus industry.

Then in 1967, the then Transport Secretary Barbara Castle proposed to hand over all of these interests in local bus services to new regional transport authorities, but then something happened to make the Government change its mind. In November of that year British Electric Traction, who by then was the only major privately-owned bus operating group in Britain, offered to sell its entire portfolio of 25 provincial bus companies and 11,300 vehicles to the government for £35m. The deal would mean that, at a stroke, 90% of all scheduled bus services in England and Wales would be owned either by the state or by local councils. It was too good an opportunity to miss. 

The government abandoned its plans for regional transport authorities in England and Wales and instead formed a brand new organisation, the National Bus Company. Nationalisation reached north of the border, too, with the nationalisation of the Scottish Bus Group which already had control of the government's transport interests there. 

It remained that way for 18 years.

In 1986, Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government changed everything. Modern Conservative thinking demanded that bus services should be run not by the state but by anyone who thought they could turn a profit doing so. Deregulation was King. Nicholas Ridley's 1986 Transport Act opened up bus operations to everyone and the mighty National Bus Company and the Scottish Bus Group were made ready to be broken up and sold off in lots.

Nicholas Ridley MP

Prior to the sell-off, the Scottish Bus Group was reorganised into 13 separate entities to make it more saleable and, at least in theory, to prevent one company simply buying up the lot and substituting a state monopoly for a private one. One of those 13 separate entities was Scottish City Link which operated the long distance express services previously operated by the Scottish Bus Group members. The government, however, decided to introduce even greater competition by offering City Link contracts to several private companies who then began operating Citylink services using their own vehicles.

Then it gets complicated. Citylink itself was privatised in 1990, and sold to its management and employees for a mere £265,000. Three years later it was sold again, this time to the ambitious coach operator National Express for £5m. All went well until 1997 when National Express' commercial ambitions began to embrace the railways which were now on the brink of being sold off by John Major's government's. It acquired the ScotRail franchise much to the dismay of the Competition Commission who objected, stating that this gave National Express a dangerous monopoly over long distance bus AND rail travel in Scotland. National Express were ultimately forced to get rid of Citylink and it was sold to Metroline, the London based subsidiary of a Singapore firm, this time for £10.2m.

The bus industry was privatised in a bid to foster greater competition and choice which would in turn provide cheaper and more efficient services, but it has rarely been that simple. The old state monopolies may have gone but new private monopolies were a constant threat and City Link was one of a number of companies to fall foul of the Competition Commissioner.

Take their flagship Glasgow to Edinburgh route, for example. In recent years this has faced heavy competition from that ace competitor Stagecoach. This became so intense that the two firms declared a truce by agreeing a new joint venture that would end competition between the two and enable Stagecoach to take a 35% stake in Citylink. It seemed perfectly logical, though not to the Competition Commission who ruled that a joint venture was not in the public interest because it reduced competition, and cited evidence suggesting that it had already led to higher fares on some routes. Stagecoach was furious but despite widespread political support in Scotland, Citylink could do little to satisfy the Commission other than to divest itself of some of its routes to another coach company.

My bus to Inverness

Not surprisingly, I haven't a clue who actually owns the sleek and shiny 917 Citylink bus to Inverness which I find waiting for me in Portree's sunlit Market Square, but frankly the mere fact that it is there seems more important. 

We romp across Skye, initially missing the turn off for the Skye Bridge and making the minor diversion to Kyleakin instead, the village I'd tried and failed to visit yesterday. I've no idea why, though. The place looks empty and nobody gets on, so perhaps the diversion is merely for old time's sake. Kyleakin used to have a crucial role in island life as one end of the heavily-used ferry crossing from the mainland, but one of the conditions for the construction of the new privately-built Skye Bridge in the 1980's was that this ferry would be forcibly discontinued to eliminate competition. Strange, that. And there was me thinking choice and competition was meant to be a good thing...

We re-trace our steps and head for the elegant Skye Bridge, a controversial structure not least because it was to be the first major capital scheme funded by the government's Private Finance Initiative, a procurement process which continues to be clouded in controversy. The deal the government struck was simple - invite a construction company to build the bridge but instead of paying them the expected £15m it would cost out of the public purse, the company would pay for it themselves and then recoup their costs by charging tolls for using it. The island would no longer be cut off from the mainland in bad weather, the crossing would be much quicker and it wouldn't cost the exchequer a bean. It all seemed very simple.

Skye Bridge Pic: Mike Peel

However, local people reacted badly once the scale of the tolls became known. Many had anticipated paying about 40p to cross, about the same as the ferry. In fact, a round trip in 2004 was costing visitors a whopping £11.40, fourteen times the cost of crossing the Forth Road Bridge which was more than twice as long. This, said the growing band of protestors, made the Skye Bridge the most expensive road in Europe, and it was said locally that the bridge was the only place in the world where you could get mugged and receive a receipt.

The bridge operators soon had a rebellion on their hands as large numbers of local people simply refused to pay the toll. Some 500 of them were subsequently arrested for non-payment, not that this seemed to put anyone off. In scenes reminiscent of an Ealing comedy film, local residents would find themselves summoned to appear before Dingwall Sheriff Court to answer a charge of non-payment of tolls. This meant they were forced to cross the bridge where they once again refused to pay the toll. This meant they incurred yet more criminal charges every time they turned up at court, and would therefore have to return to court again and again and again. It was becoming farcical. 

Protester Robbie the Pict. Pic: The Scotsman

It wasn't until Tony Blair's Labour government handed responsibility for Scotland's roads over to the new Scottish Executive, a coalition of Labour and Liberal Democrat politicians who had made the abolition of the Skye Bridge toll one of their priorities, that the whole sorry affair was finally resolved. In June 2004 the Scottish Executive announced that it was seeking to buy out the construction company's interest in the bridge and by the end of year all tolls had been abolished. There was, no doubt, much rejoicing in the glens.

Were local people right to refuse to pay? Well, many felt the cost of the bridge tolls to be unreasonable while others pointed to similar bridges in Scotland which were completely toll-free. They perhaps had a point - it did seem a tad unfair. However, once all the hue and cry had subsided, a final tally of the costs made for interesting reading. 

In December 2004, the Scottish Executive bought the bridge from the operators for around £27 million – that's £2m more than it actually cost to build, yet the operators had other reasons to celebrate, too. Yes, they had incurred over £3m in operating costs during the nine years they ran the bridge, but they'd also collected £33.3 million in tolls during that time despite the problems with non-payment. In the end, they walked away with almost £32m of the government's and local people's money in their pocket. That, too, seems a tad unfair.

Eilean Donan Castle

We make a five minute stop in Kyle of Lochalsh by the now redundant ferry ramp but we are soon off again, scooting along the shores of Loch Duich towards the improbably attractive Eilean Donan Castle, probably the single most photographed castle in the UK. If you have ever had a tin of shortbread, or Highland toffees, or anything else in a box from Scotland then it is entirely likely that it had a picture of Eilean Donan on it. This perfect craggy little castle sits on its own perfect little island a stone's throw from the mainland and reached by a picturesque stone bridge. It's utterly perfect, achingly Scottish in a kilted, skirl-of-the-pipes sort of way and a genuine jaw-dropper. As we speed past there is a line of tourists all holding cameras busily taking the best photograph they're ever likely to take.

Our road takes us along the lochside to Sheil Bridge which sits at the foot of Glen Sheil. This is the start of a long and impressive climb up through what must be one of the wildest and most attractive glens in the Highlands. The road twists and winds upwards under the shadows of the towering Five Sisters of Kintail, huge mountains which glower over the road and seem to be trying their best to hide our way. At times, it's not at all clear that there is a road up the glen, but our driver presses on and we eventually leave the deep, sheltered glen and clamber into a vast bowl of rocky moorland ringed by mountains. 

The road to Loch Cluanie

This is a remote and exhilaratingly empty land with no habitation of any kind in sight – apart from the Cluanie Inn which appears quite suddenly from out of the rock and heather. Opened more than a century ago, this white-painted inn must have been a welcome sight for travellers braving the glen's rocky roads, especially in Winter. There's a bus stop here, too, but we don't stop and instead continue along the shores of Loch Cluanie and head into Glen Moriston and the long descent into the Great Glen.

We edge our way onto the main road from Fort William to Inverness which is narrow, busy and congested. Thankfully, I can leave the traffic to the driver and concentrate fully on the views out across the Loch Ness. I'm coming to appreciate why some people choose to holiday by coach. The high seating position means you can see over walls and hedges to enjoy views of the countryside unseen by other motorists. Today's run along the loch is a case in point. The road is lightly fringed in woodland for a good part of the way, but idly gazing out of the window rewards you with regular glimpses over walls and buildings of the sparkling loch, and sudden open vistas across fields and over the dark waters to the south. This is an altogether softer, more hospitable Scotland and the views are superb, yet few of the drivers now barrelling down the A82 will have time to enjoy them. If only they'd gone by bus...

Inverness

In a surprisingly short time we arrive in Inverness, the most northerly city in the United Kingdom and my latest home for the night. It's a neat, busy, almost prim little place with an old and attractive indoor market where I spend some little time exploring. Outside, its streets possess a sense of attractively-faded grandeur. There's a cathedral and a castle, a museum to explore, a bright animating river and, today at least, the city is washed in warm, bright sunlight and the purest mountain air. There can hardly be a more pleasant place to be anywhere in the world.

To get here I've enjoyed a three-hour journey through some of the finest scenery Scotland can offer. And, from my comfortable position high up in a coach, I could scarcely have had a better view. All in all, it's been a great day, relaxing and, thanks to the ever-changing scenery, endlessly interesting. And yes, it's probably been worth the £22.50 fare. 

This has also been my penultimate day on the road. I'm becoming aware of a growing sense of internal conflict. Obviously I'm looking forward to reaching the end, but I'm also a little sad that it will all be over by tomorrow. This has been an amazing trip and now I am so close to the finish line, part of me doesn't want it to end. 

NEXT: Inverness – John O'Groats - where I celebrate another Sunday by pondering on the wisdom of religious bus advertising, discover a landscape which keeps reminding me of places I have already visited, and where I find myself stranded 16 miles from the finish line without a bus.

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Map courtesy of those awfully nice people at Google