Fort William
“If it's really a road, how come I need a ferry to get to them?”
Fort William (or An Moireasdan in Gaelic) is a House of Fraser department store with a small town attached on the west coast of Scotland. It's sole purpose in this world is to provide English tourists with cuppa soups before they attempt to tackle Ben Nevis, Europe's handsomest tall mountain and fuck off Chinese touroids looking for the Harry Potter Bridge at Glenfinnan. Fort William is also well known as the last resting place of the salmon chieftain, Monty, the only salmon to have a moustache and the only animal known to talk fluently in hieroglyphics. A statue in the town centre commemorated his life until recently, when it suddenly no longer commemorated his life and instead commemorated that "Davie is well a dikhed".
History[edit | edit source]
The town was built in the Bronze age by Bronze age people who's descendants can still be found today in a little house in Loch Linnhe called The Crannog which is kind of like a living Skara Brae (an old house in Orkney). 20th Century settlers then migrated to the area in the late 1970's following the opening of Nevisport, a large shop in the town centre where people can walk about indoors in crampons and get laughed at by the locals. This combined with Morrisons next door makes it the focal point of the town, hence it's gaelic name being An Moireasdan. This used to be a Safeways but like the rest of the area it has been taken over by the Yorkshire company and lots of other dull people from down that way.
The surrounding area of Lochaber is strongly Cameron country, although David Cameron was beaten in the last election and was replaced by The Lord of the McDonald's Big Mac, Ian Blackford, the Simple Crofter, who pops up for a visit every now and then (normally when an election is coming up soon).
Geography & Geology[edit | edit source]
Fort William is really old, like really, really old. Not hundreds, not thousands, but billions of million years old. It is built beside a big lump of granite called Ben Nevis and lies the start of a big glen that was imaginitively named The Great Glen. A big fault runs beside Fort William too and one guess what it's called. You guessed it, The Great Glen Fault. This moves now and again causing localised earthquakes, although the town was devastated and rebuilt following the great 9.3RS earthquake of 1982. The region attracts geologists the world over where they all congregate around a little shop in Corpach and look at pretty rocks that don't even come from anywhere near Fort William.
The town is located next to Loch Linnhe, which to you and I is just the sea really just so that you can stand at sea level and realise that Ben Nevis isn't really all that big. Two roads lead out of the town, the one conjested up with Campervankers and clueless Chinese Touroids in hire cars to Inverness and the other down to Glasgow and Ballahellish. There is another road called The Road To The Isles but it doesn't go anywhere important unless you want a ferry to Eigg. This always confuses tourists as most don't quite understand how it can be a Road to the Isles without bridges. A railway line has also been built and recently appeared in Derek Acorah's Weird & Spooky Things in the UK as if you get the train north (towards Spean Bridge) then you end up going south towards Glasgow.
Fort William is also famed for it being one of the most prominent micro climates in the world. It rains. Every Day. Even when Heather the Weather says that there will be bright spells across the west, it still rains. If you drive towards Fort William, hoping for a nice sunny day, you will notice that the micro climate encompasses a radius of about 10 miles around the town as you can see the contrast of dark clouds in the sky to the sun that has been mentioned in the weather. Once within the micro climate it is strongly recommended to avoid being outside as the rain is strong enough to knock you over and/or can cause severe depression within minutes. It is because of this that the BBC do not mention Fort William in the weather, as the forecast is predictable to the most clueless; it will rain. This results in the town's biggest export being disgruntled tourists who feck off back to London where it rains some more. The other exports are Aluminium (due to excavation of an Iron Age Recycling Centre near Caol) and locals, who can't get jobs because of the mass influx of Eastern Europeans and others from the Indian Subcontinent.
Famous Fort William Folk[edit | edit source]
- William Wallace and his mate, Shaka Zulu
- Gary the smelly, bum picking, finger sniffing, bus spotter
- That gay bloke off Colin & Justin
- Ian "Never, ever seen in Fort William" Blackford
- Tony McCush, X Factor Winner 1975
- Sir Jimmy Saville, The Mr Fixit of Fort William
- Garry Porteous aka Garry Done It (or Dunnit). Inspiration for Shaggy's hit song, It Wasn't Me
- Ronald McDonald
- Hans Georg Otto Hermann Fegelein, prankmaster of Fort William
- Griff Rhys Jones. First man to the summit of Ben Nevis
Other Facts[edit | edit source]
- Fort William has a "good" Shinty team and another less "good" one called Kilmallie, called that because the good name had already been taken. Fort William recently won the league and was the first time that superpowers Newtonmore or Lochbroom hadn't won it in 112 years.
- On the other hand, Fort William have a crap football team but are one of the few Highland League teams that are actually from the Highlands. They actually do hold the Wooden Spoon record (doing their best to come last on 67 occasions).
- A nearby attraction called Neptune's Staircase is a set of steps (recently upgraded to escalator) that takes you to the top of Ben Nevis with minimal effort, a bit like the Fenicular Railway at Cairngorm.
- The Underwater Centre is the former town shopping centre that drowned because it rains so much.
- Michael MacRae is a well-known Fort William resident. He owns the largest house in the whole town having made his fortune selling 'pack-a-macs' to unfortunate tourists.
- Due to Global Cooling, a ski resort has been opened which utilises the facilities of their world class downhill mountain bike venue, Nevis Range on Ben Nevis, for all-year round expensive outdoor sports.
- In 1978 the town was overrun by a population of salmon from the North Sea. They caused numerous bar fights and lynchings. But they soon left as the town was too wet for them. A statue was erected in honour of the Salmon chief, Monty, but has since floated away.
- Fort William has the highest population of neds in the highlands. This is due to Fort Williams possesion of a McDonalds. All the neds live in housing estates called Caol (pronounced cool), The Planny (pronounced shithole) or Claggan (also pronounced shithole).
- Fort William and its micro climate has been the winner of The Most wettest Area in the World 1989,1991, 1993,1996,1997, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2008. Coming second in all of the lastest 10 years' competitions to Amazonia.
- A Yorkshireman once tried to cross Fort William in a kayak. But drowned under heavy rainfall less than 40 meters from the starting line.
- Fort William is renowned for being the only town in Scotland smellable from space. When questioned, russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin said it smelt of "salty IRN BRU and sheep".
- Fort William is the source of Scotland's entire midge population. Scientists have agreed that if Fort William was to accidentally fall into the Great Glen chasm under the weight of a thermo-nuclear device, there would be no further use for midge repellent in Scotland.
- Inverlochy is famed for it's Railway Club. Mackays drive from far and wide, about 200 yards, to sup many a pint of the famous Tennants and McEwan lagers, to talk shite and drive home pished!
- As well as having the World's tallest mountain there is also a hill named after a cow. This hill can be distinguished by having the Cross of St George on it's flanks unless the local Neds have painted over it with some tartan paint.
- For a week in 1987 Fort William was the focal point of professional Unicorn Chasers after several residents claimed to have seen a flying unicorn hovering over the town, the unicorn was later captured and dissected, revelling it to be millions of midges painstakingly superglued together. This is the town's 2nd biggest hoax, only topped by the "Outdoor Capital of the UK" campaign.
- Fort William's football team was once investigated by the SSPCA over allegations that the team was having a kickabout with a hedgehog. However, the case against the team was dropped when it was found out that the hedgehog managed to put five goals past them.
External Links[edit | edit source]
Why not go and see if Fort William are still bottom of the Highland League? Visit:
As of Tuesday 14th February 2012, Fort William FC were riding high in the league in penultimate place, their highest ever placing. Footy fans coming out of Morrison's were delighted when told that they'll have away games at Ibrox next year until someone pointed out that they'll still be in the Highland League as Glasgow Rangers have gone broke and that's where they will have to play.