Studying my CalMac ferry schedule
 

As it turned out DH claimed he couldn't make heads or tails of the ferry schedule, so as usual I turned into the chief researcher.

Tried to juggle all those little things like: cheaper to leave US mid-week, bank holiday weekend, driving along Loch Lomond on a Sunday, Lewis/Harris pretty much closed on a Sunday, Dunvegan Castle and Talisker distilleries on Skye closed on weekends, fitting in a lunch at Three Chimneys, etc.

Note, this is only a piece of my trip planning, but this is what I came up with. See if I read the schedule anywhere near correctly. End up leaving the week before bank holiday weekend.

Stay in Glasgow on a Sat night (that blows the mid-week flight)

Stay in Glennfinnan on Sunday night (means driving along Loch Lomond on a Sunday)

Take the Mallaig ferry to Skye; spend Mon, Tues, Wed nights.

Take the Uig/Tarbet ferry to Lewis. Hopefully Thursday night at b&b near Callanais Stones or in Stornoway.

Take ferry to Ullapool. I assume it would need to the the mid-day ferry. I can't imagine getting up to leave a b&b in time to catch the very early a.m. ferry. Two different places we stayed in France actually locked their car parks surrounding the hotel until about 8:30 a.m. Plus it would be hard to get DH up.

We live at 61 degrees lat. I looked up both Stornoway and Glasgow to see how early it gets daylight. Ullapool is (if I recall) around 57 degrees.

Anyway, do you see any glaring errors or misreads there? I realize they will issue a new schedule next spring but assume it would be very similar.

Seems reasonable - though you have 24 hours plus of driving and Ullapool to Glasgow is a 6 hour solid drive alone. Don't know where you are coming from but could you do an open jaws ticket with Glasgow & Inverness just to save what will be a very nasty drive? Alternatively consider dropping the car at Inverness and getting the train back to Glasgow

Dpoubt BTW you'd have problems with car parks being closed - most places won't have car parks & most B&Bs start up early in the morning. If you wanted you could be on the road by 7:00am

As I said, this is only a portion of the trip--the part I was having trouble figuring out. Will be another week before we go back to Glasgow.

Guess part of the reason I doubted my ferry schedule interpretation was that it appears there are Sunday ferries serving Lewis/Harris. The books that I had read said no. However, what I ran into in my scheduling was that the ferry from Uig on Skye didn't leave on the same schedule every day.

alan, thanks for the info on the car parks.

The Sunday ferries started last year, to the great ire of the Wee Frees.

"<i>The books that I had read said no</i>"

Guidebooks certainly have their place, but you have to understand they are out of date the day they hit the shelves. Simply impossible to be up-to-date w/ the lead time they need for publication. So you need to double check on-line any opening times/prices/timetables/etc.

Thanks, if the above schedule works, I may see if I can find a b&b overnight in Ullapool. Hopefully, something where we could walk to hear music--but not a room above a noisy pub.

Darn, I'm supposed to be streamlining number of nights, not adding them (grin).