In this blog post I thought I'd reflect on a wonderful ten days in Scotland, and try and summarise what we did and point out some of the highlights and some of the lowlights. First, a summary of where we went, with links to the posts about each day:
Day 1: Coventry - London - Edinburgh
Day 2: return trips from Edinburgh to Newcraighall, North Berwick, and Inverness
Day 3: tourism round Edinburgh
Day 4: Edinburgh - Glasgow - Edinburgh - Fife Circle - Inverkeithing - Aberdeen - Inverness
Day 5: Inverness - John O'Groats - Wick - Inverness
Day 6: Inverness - Kyle of Lochalsh - Skye - Armadale - Mallaig - Fort William
Day 7: Fort William - Crianlarich - Oban - Glasgow, plus an evening in Balloch
Day 8: Glasgow suburban lines, Glasgow Transport Museum, Glasgow Subway
Day 9: Glasgow - Falkirk - Polmont - Glasgow - Alloa - Stirling - Dundee - Haymarket - Milngavie - Lanark - Glasgow
Day 10: Glasgow - London - Coventry
Over the course of the eight days wholly in Scotland, we spent exactly two days on trains, buses and ferries (i.e., 48 hours and 0 minutes), and travelled 1886.25 miles. The ticket cost us each £107.80; had we had to pay walk-up singles, it would have cost us £294.25.
Including the journeys to and from Coventry, I travelled 2868.25 miles, for a total of 2 days, 11 hours, and 21 minutes out of the ten days (Ian and Matt will have travelled slightly less), and the cost each came to £235.50; walk-up fares would have meant paying £479.45, or £578.30 if we'd insisted on first class on the journey from London to Edinburgh.
This is very good value, though perhaps it isn't as much of a reduction as I've got from other such tickets: this is partially due to the very good subsidised fares in Scotland, particularly on the remote lines in the Highlands. For example, a single from Wick to Inverness, a distance of 175 miles, costs just £11.20 (with railcard), and at 6p a mile must represent one of the best-value walk-up fares in the country.
Nonetheless, we covered a huge amount of distance in ten days: we have now been on every line in Scotland north of Glasgow and Edinburgh. Indeed, outside of the Glasgow suburban area, the only major lines we didn't go on were the lines from Glasgow to Stranraer, and Glasgow to Carlisle via Kilmarnock (though both Ian and I have done Stranraer-Carlisle via Kilmarnock in the past).
At some point in the ten days we used most of the major stations in Scotland, and it's difficult to pick a favourite: I think, however, that Glasgow Central stands out as the best, with its magnificient roof, lots of space for people to circulate, and lots of shops with pretty much everything you'd need.
Neilston, however, easily stands out as the worst station we visited: well, perhaps "the worst" is the wrong way of putting it, but it was almost entirely devoid of... everything. The area around the station was completely dead, with some houses and no sight of any kind of shop, so we ended up with 26 minutes in which to do... exactly nothing.
Stemming from that, it's fairly easy to pick the least enjoyable day: Day 8 was a bit of a damp squib, in many ways. We deliberately didn't plan it, and benefitted from a good lie-in, but that meant that we didn't necessarily do the most interesting things; either we should have picked some more scenic lines (and some of the lines to the south-west of Glasgow are reputedly very nice indeed), or perhaps we should have done more things like the Transport Museum and had a day off trains entirely, like we did in Edinburgh on Day 3.
On the other hand, it's very difficult to pick which day was most enjoyable. If judged entirely on the trains, then Day 9 was very enjoyable for many reasons. For one, we went on 11 trains and thus had lots of connections to make (and we did!). More importantly, though, we got to see two of the newest additions to the railway network, and saw for ourselves that Scotland's railway network is flourishing.
If judged entirely on the scenery, on the other hand, I think Day 6 just wins: going from Inverness to Fort William, going across Skye and back to the mainland by ferry, and on over the awesome Glenfinnan Viaduct was just beautiful. That said, Day 7, going over Rannoch Moor, and spending the evening in Balloch, comes a very close second.
All things considered, however, I think the most satisfying day was Day 5: we got to John O'Groats, and back, by public transport, and saw some of the most barren scenery anywhere in the country. While the scenery further west was more lush (and personally I found it even more beautiful), the satisfaction of getting to the end of the country without a car was immense.
All told, we were very lucky indeed to get such good weather in the Highlands: aside from a shower of rain in Inverness on Day 2, we didn't get any serious rain at all until Day 8, by which time we were back in Glasgow with things to do. All of the lines in the Highlands had their own particular beauty, and in many ways there's no point in choosing a favourite; nonetheless, my favourite moment of the holiday was realising on Day 7, while atop Rannoch Moor in blazing sunshine, that it was the middle of the rush hour in London.
Our overall impression of the Scottish transport system was that it was much more holistic than the rest of the country: thought has been put in to designing a network which is well-connected and serves pretty much every community in Scotland. From the well-used Glasgow suburban network, to lines to the middle of nowhere in the Highlands, all the trains were well-used; none, however, were horribly overcrowded (though we did avoid the rush hour most of the time), except the London-Aberdeen train we used on Day 4 from Inverkeithing (never before has an HST felt small).
Here, then, is a network with capacity for growth, and, unlike the English, the Scottish government has been very willing to invest in new railway lines, such as the Alloa line and the Airdrie-Bathgate project we saw on Day 9, but they also have plans to upgrade much of the network in the central belt (see also Day 9), with the Edinburgh-Glasgow Main Line soon to be electrified, and plans afoot for extensions onwards to Perth, Dundee, Aberdeen, and maybe even Inverness.
As if Scotland itself wasn't wonderful enough, it was also particularly nice to be able to do both long-distance main lines to Scotland, on Day 1 and Day 10; not since doing the All-Line Rover have I had the opportunity to travel so long on one train. Indeed, even on the All-Line Rover, going from London to Aberdeen, I changed twice: the Glasgow-London train thus represents the longest journey on a single train I've ever done.
What's next? In the immediate future, I'm planning a trip to California in September, which I hope to be blogging about as well. In terms of trains, well, we've been to John O'Groats, so I suppose a trip to Land's End is now obligatory. That said, on the subject of long journeys on a single train, one idea was floated which was even more insane than usual: there is one train a day from Aberdeen to Penzance, and it takes 13 hours; almost no-one ever does the whole journey... One of these days...
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