Portsmouth to Fort William trip

I think it would be a great pity to avoid a western route just because of the infamous Loch Lomond road!

I have posted our route from LL via  Inveraray and Oban then to Fort  William and beyond, I can recommend it, we tow a 7.95m twin axle and it was absolutely no problem on that route.

Why not go up the western route and return across country, or vice versa, best of both worlds.

Don't underestimate the time taken for any journey. I've just got back from a 150 mile round trip. Over 100 miles of this was on dual carriageways and the M6, travelling usually at 55 - 58mph  on these roads. I was a bit amazed, at the average speed, according to my car's computer. It was only 32.6mph and there weren't any roadworks, accidents or other holdups to contend with. On long journeys of, for example Derby to Dover, 220 miles of almost total motorway and dual carriageways, the average that I used to get was still only 44mph.

When I was at work many years ago I had the discussion with one of my co-directors about distances and times our reps could do in a day. He was saying they could do 70mph on motorways and dual carriageways and 30mph in built up areas so they should be getting in far more calls than they were. In reality, because a lot of our business was done with inner city companies across the UK it turned out that the average speed was just 33mph - again according to the computers of both mine and his car. 

In 2022 going down to Cornwall along the M5 there was an accident. As a consequence, for part of the journey we did 15 miles in 1¾ hours, time that couldn't be made up. So, as I said earlier, don't underestimate times. It will only make for more stressful driving and possibly accidents, if you start to think you are not going to arrive at your destination at the time you imagined you would do.

There’s simply so much more traffic around nowadays on all kinds of roads in the UK. Gone are the days of a quick weekend in Cornwall from up here in Yorkshire, something we used to do regularly back in the 80’s and 90’s. At times you barely saw another vehicle on some parts of M5 and A30. 
Hopefully, OP will have a good journey, some decent stops and few hold ups, something we all dream of I’m sure🙂

the average speed was just 33mph - again according to the computers of both mine and his car.

That is exactly what the trip on our MH says, I’ve not reset it since we bought it and we’ve completed 18,500 miles. Doing all sorts of driving, including Motorway / Autoroute and also several trips to the north of Scotland. It of course doesn’t include stops and on any long journey over 2 hours it is sensible to make at least one.