At Euston, I ransomed my bags from the left luggage and sat quietly in the lounge – except when playing with a small child who spoke an unidentifiable language – for the sleeper to Inverness. The lounge has free water, snacks etc plus showers and toilets. The train was very comfortable – although very narrow – and I had a compartment with two bunks, a toilet and shower and a space under the bottom bunk for my suitcase. No pictures because I thought I would take them in the morning. More of that later……

The first intimation that not everything was going to plan was an announcement that there would be no hot food in the dining car, either for dinner or for breakfast. People who were planning on having dinner were front loading with crisps etc from the lounge. I was full of sandwiches and cake so didn’t really need a full dinner. I had, however, been looking forward to scrambled eggs with the Highlands flying past outside.

The second intimation that not everything was going to plan was a polite young man knocking on my door at 4am. ‘I’m sorry Madame, did you get the email? I’m afraid you are going to have to change trains here as we can no longer use the line to Inverness.’ Turns out, I found out later, that there was engineering work that had overrun. The email had been sent at 2.30 am and ‘here’ was Edinburgh where the train divides. The people going to Aberdeen got to sleep in.

Those of us going to Inverness had to stagger across an almost empty Waverley Station to get the 5.30 am train to Aberdeen. This was followed by a two hour journey along the east coast of Scotland, punctuated by uncomfortable naps. Again, no photos.

At Aberdeen we had approximately 10 minutes to change to the train to Inverness. This stopped almost everywhere and a lot of people who got on were surprised to find it full of extra people and large suitcases.

At Inverness there was 5 minutes to change to the train I was supposed to get. I would have waited for the next train but there are only two a day. This was another two hours to Thurso through the Highlands and a lot of lovely scenery. Again no pictures because a combination of drizzle and filthy train windows made it impossible.

A compensation for all this stress is that the train company has refunded all the money paid for my ticket!

The other thing about these 9 hours of train travel was that nowhere was there anything to eat that wasn’t disgusting train coffee, crisps or chocolate. If you couple that with the afternoon tea, I could almost feel scurvy setting in.

The Premier Inn in Thurso is right next to the station. I was too early for check in so I dumped my stuff and went into town for lunch (breakfast?). Only one place seemed to be open and right next to the Coop. Succour!

Next morning taxi and ferry to Stromness. The weather was not conducive to photos but here you are anyway. You could try

https://www.visitscotland.com/places-to-go/islands/orkney

for some better pictures.

On arrival in Stromness, I found two more people from my tour. We had been told that the taxi to take us to the hotel was coming at 3.15. At 3.10 a taxi man wanders in, says something to my companions and leaves again. We follow him out and decide he is not our taxi when we see him loading someone else’s luggage into his boot. 20 minutes later he came back and we discovered he was our taxi after all. This is our hotel: