The Caledonian Sitter

 And a guest blogger :

Having visited Orkney 4 times now I have discovered that there are only two options to get there: quickly (which isn't actually that quick) or cheaply. Previously I've gone for the quick option and flown up from both Luton and City airports and had to sacrifice purchasing a couple of pairs of sought after Jimmy Choos.

I've been persuaded to try the overnight train from Euston to Aberdeen to see what its like before he ventures out onto it. For further details see the Scotrail website

For this delightful train ride you have two options a bed or a seat. As I was going for the cheap option I decided to get a seat for a mere £33 rather than splash out close to £100 for a bed. As the journey was 10 hours and 18 minutes, it meant that my seat cost me £0.053 a minute. Not bad value really.


The seats are large - more like airline seats and they all recline slightly so it didn't seem too bad. And if worse came to worse I had seasons 1 and 2 of Game of Thrones to keep me company. Despite my hopes that I would have a carriage to myself I wasn't the only person to be persuaded into a seat and there were about 12 people in my carriage.

One thing I like about travelling on trains is seeing the countryside and looking out the window. However, for most of the journey this was my view:

The journey itself wasn't too bad as there is a bar open until 7am serving food and drinks. And gin. I was especially thankful for the gin.

I managed to get a couple of hours asleep before arriving in Edinburgh at around 4am. What they don't warn you about is that the train splits into three at Edinburgh – one part goes to Aberdeen, one to Inverness and the other to Fort William (I think). Which isn't the most delicate or quiet of processes. We were in Edinburgh for around 40 minutes before setting off again. Now what you don't get when travelling by plane is the views – which were beautiful. Who knew that Inverkeithing was so delightful at 5am.

The train makes several stops between Edinburgh and Aberdeen but because they're just dropping off and not picking up the train was actually running ahead of schedule so we got into Aberdeen around 7.25 ahead of the scheduled 7.35. This gave me plenty of time to get to the airport to catch the 9.05 flight.  

All in all, not a bad way to travel and I would probably do it again – it has the advantage that you can do a days work travel overnight and then have a full day in Orkney the next day. Although next time I will get a bed.