Ride a steam train over the Glenfinnan Viaduct

The Glenfinnan Viaduct carries the railway to Mallaig across twenty-one arches on a curve, thirty meters above the River Finnan. It opened on 1 April 1901. The local rock defeated everything else its builder, Robert McAlpine, tried, so he poured it in mass concrete with no steel inside and was Concrete Bob ever after. It has since been in four Harry Potter films, which is why the hillside above it fills with cameras every summer morning.

The steam train leaves Fort William in the morning. The seats are at tables by the window, and coal smoke comes in whenever somebody opens one. One plain thing: on a morning of high fire risk, or after a locomotive fault, the operator can put a diesel on the front instead, and the ride still runs.

After the viaduct the line passes Loch Morar, at 310 meters the deepest fresh water in the British Isles, and Arisaig, the most westerly station on the British mainland, then stops at Mallaig, where the land runs out.