Last weekend I spent a few days up in Scotland, way up north in the Cairngorms. Steve Black had mentioned a while back that he and Tanya were heading up there this month and invited me along… so I thought ‘what the heck!’
It was a bit of a trek up there – I was making the journey up to Glasgow by train on the Thursday morning to meet up with Steve at lunchtime, and then he was to drive the rest of the way up to where we’d be staying just south of Aviemore. However, as the date got closer, there was news of three major storms hitting the UK – Dudley, Eunice and Franklin – which meant travel was a bit of a nightmare! All the train companies were basically telling people not to travel north on the Wednesday evening until after about 9am on the Thursday, and not at all on the Friday! I managed to get the train from Stockport just after nine to meet up with my connecting train at Preston (which was running), and for a time, all went to plan.
However, when we got to Carlisle, we didn’t move for a while, and then were eventually told that a train had recently fallen onto the overhead cables – the train before us had just managed to get past it, but our train was basically cancelled from that point onwards!
No trains past Carlisle.
So I then had to stand in a queue to wait 3 hours for coaches to turn up to take the ever-growing group of people to Glasgow! I was the last to get on my particular coach, which meant I had no choice of where to sit, and of course that meant I had to sit next to a guy who was so large that he basically took up half of my seat as well as his own, so I was having to perch on the edge of it! Not ideal for a two hour journey, and not helped by the fact the guy was chain-drinking bottles of lager!
I was supposed to meet Steve at 1pm, but I eventually got into Glasgow at five o’clock. I found Steve parked nearby and we started the 125 mile journey up to Kincraig in the Highlands. When we got there, we unloaded our bags before going into Aviemore for a much needed meal at the Cairngorms Hotel. Weather-wise, it was pretty cold and icy, but there was no sign yet of the snow that had been forecast.
