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Whilst Euan stepped aboard a boat at Acharacle to follow the route that took when he was rowed up Loch Shiel before raising the standard at , Mark Stephen was in Mallaig learning about the herring fishing on which the town was built. After picking Euan up from the other end of Loch Shiel and taking him back to Acharacle to get his car, I zoomed over to Arisaig to visit the cave where Bonnie Prince Charlie is said to have hidden whilst waiting to flee Scotland.

Meanwhile Euan headed to Mallaig to pick up Mark so we could leave a car for the next day to take us back to Fort William, and then home, after the train journey. The temperature was raised considerably on Thursday morning on the platform at Fort William station, where the Jacobite Steam train was already puffing away in prepartion for carrying the 370 passengers to Mallaig and back. Mark and Euan instantly regressed into boyhood when we were allowed on the footplate to see how the engine works. My favourite line was from driver, Alex Iain MacDonald, who said that his engine is like a woman - if you treat her well then she'll work all day for you.

We were determined to capture the moment when the train left the station for the start of the programme - much to the annoyance of all the passengers, who, whilst Mark was galloping through the introduction, were shouting at us to hurry up and get on the train. After the initial excitement of the sights, sounds and smells, it was Mark who noticed that steam has quite a soporific effect - we almost had to wake him up at one point to do some recording after our carriage become filled with steam during a long tunnel.

We were all genuinely struck by the landscapes - and seascapes - we could see from the train, especially Euan who started jumping up and down when we spotted the . Earlier in the week, he spent a day on a boat zooming between Eigg, Muck, Canna and Rum for the first part of Out of Doors last Saturday morning.

So, off the train at Mallaig and then we had to cross over the entire country back to to put it all together. All that's on this week's Out of Doors, available on the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ iPlayer.

Helen Needham is the senior producer of Out of Doors and The Beechgrove Potting Shed.