How far the distance?

Distance is relative.

You can fly from London to Australia in 24 hours, but that doesn’t take too much effort. You get to an airport, you sit down for 12 hours, change planes and sit down for another 12 hours. It’s a long distance but not in terms of efforts required to cover that distance.

The longest distances I’ve experienced have not been by plane.

One of the longest experiences of distance I have had was travelling back from the Isle of Mull in Scotland, where I’d been for a few days with my sister and her friends.

I got up early to take the 7:30am school bus from Tobermory to Fishnish.

At Fishnish I took the first ferry of the day across to Lochaline.

In Lochaline I sat at the bus stop for maybe an hour waiting for the first (and possibly only) bus of the day. Luckily it was a sunny day and not raining. The bus took 1.5 hrs to get to Fort William and I got to know the driver and the only other passenger quite well over the course of that journey.

In Fort William I had a little bit of time to walk around the town and have lunch before I caught the afternoon train to Glasgow Queen Street station. This train line is called the West Highland Way and I can highly recommended it as one of the most scenic lines in the UK.

Arriving in Glasgow Queen Street, I gathered my luggage and walked out of the station past George Square to Queen Street, past the Gallery of Modern Art and along Gordon Street to Glasgow Central Station. I used to live in Glasgow so I know the centre of town reasonably well. It’s only a few minutes walk, not far at all.

From Glasgow Central I took a train to Prestwick Airport.

At the airport I checked in for my flight to Stansted. It’s not a long flight, about 45 minutes. One of those flights where the plane has only just about levelled off and the pilot is already announcing it’s time to prepare for landing.

At Stansted, I took the Stansted express train to Tottenham Hale station in London. Trains run every 15 minutes so I didn’t have to wait long.

From here I had the option to take the Tube or a bus home, but I decided to treat myself and took a taxi. I think I arrived home around 9pm.

Nine journeys all lined up one after the other. That’s how you experience distance, that’s how you know the Isle of Mull is far from where you live.