Off to the big City

Aug 18th, 2014

Off to the big City

I’m off to Glasgow for a business meeting, and as always seems to happen, it is a beautiful day in Lochgoilhead today. R gave me a lift to Helensburgh because he is having new tires put on the car today – they were low on tread when we had the MOT done last week and we don’t want to get to winter on our bad roads with marginal tires. But I am going to try to get public transport all the way back – which means trying to catch the 14:25 bus back from Helensburgh today.

Public transport around Lochgoilhead is what I would describe as rather limited. There are buses to both Helensburgh and Dunoon direct from the village – but they are very sporadic and it is not a service where if you miss one you want to wait for the next. From Helensburgh there is an excellent quick service into Glasgow, and a rather slower one into Edinburgh via Glasgow (actually with the latter you are actually quicker changing on to the fast train when you get to Glasgow). There are also trains from Arrochar into both Glasgow and Oban/Fort William – but these are very infrequent – so only good if you can aim yourself at a specific service.

In general while on the subject of transport – I would not describe Lochgoilhead as commutable to Glasgow on a daily basis even if you have a car. I suppose it is just about doable if you were very very dedicated, but it is at least an hour and a half each way into the city centre. Edinburgh would be right out. It is interesting that when you get to places that really are commutable (e.g. Helensburgh itself), property prices rise dramatically.

Returning to the subject of Lochgoilhead and public transport – I don’t understand why they don’t run extra buses in the summer when it would be popular – the other day we saw way more people waiting for the bus than were going to be able to get on it.

DISCUSSION 1 Comments

  1. donich_admin August 23, 2014 at 2:12 pm

    N says that I can’t spell the word ‘tire’ apparently in UK it is ‘tyre’ – who knew – it still looks wrong to me…

Leave a Reply to donich_admin

Your email address will not be shared or published. Required fields are marked *

Click here to cancel reply.