Today was another day, a whole one this time, spent on the train. Leaving the hostel at the early hour of 7:30 we caught the 7:55 direct service to London Kings Cross; the only direct train of the day, with a scheduled journey time of about 8 hours.
As we headed south we were treated to more beautiful mountain scenery. Were we not travelling first class I could see being train-bound for so long becoming quite uncomfortable, but as it was the seats were large and comfortable, we were plied with tea and biscuits, and the time simply flew by as our train wound its way through the highlands. I was glued to the window enjoying the scenery all the way, enjoying the landscape that was much like that we'd cycled through, and yet very different in terms of the actual shape of the mountains and valleys.
Rosie preferred to read her book.
As we approached Gleneagles the occasional showers turned to thunderstorms, and in fact quite soon the train came to a halt. We crawled forward one signal at a time for about half an hour, which we discovered later was due to lightning hitting one of the signals in that area!
We arrived into Edinburgh about 30 minutes late, but we were quickly on our way again, heading south along the coast past Berwick and Lindisfarne. Rosie persuaded me to play scrabble with her, which was a mistake as I once again lost horribly. There must be something about that bit of line!
When we reached york we were once again delayed, this time by a fault with one of the train's power cars. To be honest the prospect of arriving into Kings Cross an hour late didn't bother us; we would have had three hours to kill in London anyway before we could get a train from Paddington. Besides, we were comfortable and an hour delay on an 8 hour train journey didn't seem like much.
Arriving at Kings Cross we decided to go and find some dinner at St Pancras International. We found a nice little itallian restaurant and had a pleasant meal watching the Eurostar trains come and go. This was followed by a slightly manic ride across London to reach Paddington to catch the last train of our long journey home.
Over twelve hours after setting off from Inverness we finally made it back to my flat. A very good holiday, but nice to be home!
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