JOHN MACLEOD: A maddening, bendy-wendy road jammed with caravans, bikes and scooters... but it still has its charms

Published: 20:05, 8 July 2026 | Updated: 20:05, 8 July 2026 On Tuesday, after a protracted and delightful change of scene in Glasgow, I fought my way home to my island lair near Stornoway. By all the roundabouts on the Boulevard, through steady drizzle, stuck at a crawl time and again behind cyclists, caravanners and the odd puttering scooter – to catch a ferry that, in the end, was two and a half hours late. On account, of course, of ‘technical issues’. Finally, there was a near-death experience with a young stag, prancing across my path just miles from my home. Most of my run, from Kelvin Court to Invergarry, was by just one protracted drag – the A82. It’s the second-longest in Scotland after the A9, which attracts far more fuss, and much of the drive is very beautiful. It takes in, after all, Loch Lomond, the Rannoch Moor, Glen Coe, the Ballachulish Narrows, Ben Nevis, the Commandos Memorial – not just spectacular as an affecting sight in itself, but for the views from it – and Loch Ness. There is scarcely a mention of the monster in local lore till 1933, when the new A82 was carved up the northern shore of Loch Ness and with much dynamiting. Enough to leave any lumbering survivor of the Age of the Dinosaurs seriously ticked off – and which, of course, saw an explosion in motor-tourism and, across assorted West Highland straits, the first little car ferries. Indeed, had I been making my Tuesday run before 1940, I’d have had to catch three – Ballachulish, Dornie and Kyleakin – just to reach Skye. Driving on the A82 has its frustrations but it also takes in spectacular scenery, including Glen Coe  Improvements to what was, from 1923, the A82 continued through the 20s and 30s, including for the first time a highway round Loch Leven and a diversion, from the earlier routes blazed by Marshall Wade and Thomas Telford, across Rannoch Moor. The most daunting stretch – an entire new highway through Glen Coe – gave valued employment in hard times to many Lewismen, including my young MacLeod grandfather. The historic, much higher road was from 1980 repurposed as a cherished stretch of the West Highland Way. If less spectacular, the Boulevard has its own breadth and elegance: indeed, the late Tam Galbraith (the last Tory MP in Glasgow) once proudly declared the Great Western Road ‘the most noble entry to any city in Europe’. From 1936 the A82 was one of Britain’s first designated ‘trunk roads,’ though from April 1, 1996, only from Dalnottar – which, in practical terms, means maintenance back to St George’s Cross is the responsibility of two local councils, not the Scottish Government. What’s striking about the A82 is that very little, really, has been done to it over some eight decades since (by contrast, the A9 was all but rebuilt – badly – in the 70s and 80s: supremely boring, with dangerous T-junctions, scant straights for safe overtaking and daunting ever since). The A82? Well, the Boulevard was dualled with little difficulty when I was a small boy. The Ballachulish Bridge opened in December 1975, ending a frustrating summer bottleneck, and the road up Loch Lomond from Balloch to Tarbet was greatly improved in the 80s. After all, by way of Arrochar, it is the run to Faslane, and a retained national capacity to reduce the cities of our enemies to irradiated cinders always looses Whitehall purse-strings. But the narrow, bendy-wendy, faintly maddening stretch from Tarbert to Inverarnan has not changed in my lifetime, save for the £9million viaduct that dealt with the infamous Pulpit Rock in 2015. The long overdue Crianlarich bypass was completed in 2014, but Rannoch Moor is still bracketed by two elegant Art Deco bridges – just too narrow for today’s comfort – and the first heralds a difficult zig-zag up the hill after Bridge of Orchy. ‘Overtourism’ is now a serious problem in Glen Coe – folk parking with abandon everywhere, as it has become in high-season Skye. People used to take a room or whatever for several days in a locality and amble gently about, getting to know the area. Now they dash hither and yon in a bucket-list frenzy – Outlander is a favoured inspiration – and are suckers for tales, like those confected for Skye’s Fairy Pools by cynical guides. The most dangerous stretch of all on the A82 is the ten-mile schlepp from the Corran ferry to Fort William. It must never be rushed and it is no road for overtaking. There is sheer cliff high to your right, pitiless trees or a drop into Loch Linnhe on the other, and few years pass without a fatality. The new slips now being laid for the ferry, with better junctions and ample parking, will make it significantly safer. An aerial view of the A82 road crossing the Rannoch Moor. The A82 is the second-longest road in Scotland At Fort William itself is the one chunk of the A82 that still saddens me: a hideous, piled shoreside bypass (but, oh, so efficient) completed half a century ago and occasioning, for instance, the demolition of the town’s beautiful old railway station. The last testing stretch is significantly to the north, between the Commandos and the shoreside road by Loch Lochy. The bends are fiendish and there is a serious smash or two in Glen Gloy most years. The stretch north of Invergarry – where I turn left for the A87 – has some minor frustrations as you head for Inverness, but that’s a run I rarely make now. There has been agitation over the state of the A9 for many years now, John Swinney taking up the cudgels soon after he became MP for North Tayside in 1997. After all, it is not just a vital artery to Inverness, these days no mean city, but to distant Wick and much in between. The campaign for improvements to the A82 has had a far harder struggle for attention. It is an existential matter only for the West Highland communities it serves. Inverness is broadly home to 70,000 people: Fort William, by similar parameters, just 11,000. What chance for Kinlochleven, for Kilchoan, for Invergarry? The laird of Ardnamurchan, Donald Houston, has fought for his community for 30 years. Once he went to London to give a presentation on West Highland realities. It had been a good day and he was enjoying a chat with two MPs when some bumptious fellow intervened. ‘There are more votes in a single housing-estate in Glasgow,’ he brayed, ‘than in the entire agricultural community of the islands. And you lot don’t matter.’