Into the Highlands
Oct. 8th, 2023 10:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyphomandraWe came up Thursday on the Caledonian Sleeper, an overnight train from London that starts off as one lengthy train and then splits into Highland and Lowland sections overnight. I am very fond of trains; when I was ~8 we had a family holiday in Europe with a lot of trips via couchette sleepers, and I found them absolutely fascinating (bunks on a train! Odd thick paper sheets! train design instantly familiar when I saw it again in a volume of From Eroica with Love, of all things) and so I really wanted to give my kids their own no doubt equally odd associations.
We bought Eurail passes for this trip (you get 15 days free travel over two months; some trains e.g. Eurostar also require compulsory seat reservations, which cost 10-20 euros, but otherwise all trains on a travel day are free; kids' passes also free) and despite Brexit UK trains are included. The Caledonian Sleeper is still expensive, as you have to pay room supplements, but it's cheaper and less subject to dynamic pricing.
The train we intended to take from Cardiff to London got cancelled, so I hustled the kids out of school and got us onto an earlier one, then took the tube from Paddington to Euston, and then sat round in a rather unattractive corner of the station waiting to board. Which we eventually did, with a lot of excitement! Our car was right at the end; the sleeping cars have a single corridor, with the rooms opening off them; we were in two classic rooms, each with two bunks and a basin and an internal interconnecting door. Fancier rooms have their own en suite (and the fanciest have a double bed rather than bunks) or there is a cheaper seat only option. The bunks were firm but reasonably comfortable, we got snacks and Caledonian Sleeper ear plugs & eye masks, and I had TS Elliot's Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat stuck firmly in my head for hours.
Anyway. Eventually everyone calmed down and slept at least half of the night, and we woke up to an early morning Scottish landscape that was quite beautiful, gilded light over forests and hills; breakfast delivered by the train staff (bread rolls with either sausage or bacon in them; my son is still irked by the fact that "sausage roll" in Wales means soft roll with sausage in it rather than pastry, have had to visit Greggs every so often to buy him a Proper version), and then arrival into Inverness just after 8.30. Our accommodation wasn't ready yet as the previous guests were still checking out, but the owners met us at the station to collect our bags and gave us some food recommendations to try out. We ambled slowly through the streets, which were pretty quiet, and ended up at a cafe called Wild Pancakes; the pancakes seemed relatively tame but did taste good.
We caught the bus to Culloden and went through the museum, which was small but well set-up. There was a children's puzzle trail where you had to find answers to questions, take the first letter of each, and rearrange them to find the name of a notorious spy who betrayed the Jacobites (FotH enthusiasts will not need the actual answers!), and the museum goes chronologically through the events, often splitting so the Jacobite experience is on one side of the room and the English on the other. At the battle itself there's a large room with screens on all four sides, showing an re-enactment of the start of the battle, which is well done and also rather depressing when you see how badly off the Jacobites were (position, readiness, resources...). There is a bit about the aftermath but not much; mostly it jumps to the preservation of the site and the creation of the museum. There was also an an area with staff and one woman was going through the typical battle kit of a Jacobite soldier vs an English soldier vs an English officer. I thought this was very interesting! The English officer's kit had things like a clay stick that you heated in the fire and then used to set the curls on your wig, and a slotted board that you put around your jacket buttons so you could polish them without damaging the jacket. She also had a set of playing cards from the era - no numbers/letters on them (too much illiteracy), and without the double heads on the face cards.
I wandered a bit round the battlefield itself and would have spent more time there, but my kids were a lot more over things than I was, and also some heavy clouds were drawing in. We bussed back, had a late lunch/early dinner, and went back to our accommodation. This was a house in the centre of Inverness called "Jacobite's Retreat"; built from stone salvaged from Cromwell's fort in 1672, used a a sanctuary for Jacobites fleeing Culloden (alas, not successfully; they were caught and executed), and in addition to being historically fascinating also right next door to Leaky's Secondhand Bookshop. The owner left all these delicious local foods for us (a cheese platter, fresh juices, organic milk, oatcakes and sourdough bread) and it was very comfortable. I eventually made it next door and found two whole shelves of DK Broster, plus an assortment of other treasures (I dithered over the Jane Duncans and eventually decided against them, also no Worrals, but I did pick up a hb of Richard Hillary's The Last Enemy as well as Broster's Almond, Wild Almond and A Fire of Driftwood). By now it was raining heavily and we stayed in for the rest of the night.
On Saturday I'd booked a day-long minibus tour around Loch Ness. To get to the pick-up involved crossing the Ness River, which looked quite high; the guide apologised for the weather and took us to the first point on the trip, our first glimpse of the loch. The rain was persistent and the temperature was about 8 degrees; naturally there were people swimming in the loch itself (wiry over 50s wild swimming types, no wetsuits). We then went on to the Falls of Foyers. If you look online you can see pictures of a pretty but fairly sedate waterfall, with grumblings about how local hydroelectric power schemes have diverted water and significantly reduced the flow. This was not an issue when we were there - the waterfall was massive, turbid and more brown than white, with water spray everywhere. The guide said he'd never seen anything like this before.
In hindsight, possibly we should have paid more attention to this. Instead, we drove on, past the burnt-out shell of a house that belonged to Aleister Crowley and was then bought by Jimmy Page, and on to Fort Augustus. This is basically a tourist trap (massive car park for the coaches, cafes of dubious quality, souvenir shops selling Nessie trinkets) and although I did like looking at the Caledonian Canal lock gates, from a FotH viewpoint the whole place is very off-putting! We were supposed to go on but a tree was down on the road, so the guide organised for us to join a boat tour of the loch (this was included in the tour but was supposed to be later, on a smaller boat going around Urquhart Castle) while this was cleared. This was very polished, very touristy, and very much about the Loch Ness monster (they do a lot of showing sonar readings), and although I did get to see some nice bits of scenery it was not my thing. The tour we were on was much better and I liked the guide's wry sense of humour, plus he did not incessantly make jokes about whisky.
The road was cleared when we got back, and we went briefly by Urquhart Castle (very pretty) and Invermoriston (extremely damp, with a wildly surging river), and by now news was coming in of widespread flooding, with a month's worth of rain in a day across the Highlands. All trains south of Inverness were cancelled. Our original travel plan - to train to Edinburgh the next day and then fly back to Cardiff from there - looked dubious. We squelched dismally back to our accommodation (I had stupidly only brought sneakers with me, so had wet feet all day) and then I sprinted out across the Ness again to pick up fish and chips, as nowhere was delivering due to the weather.
We spent the evening playing board games and trying to work out alternative travel routes back. I woke up at 730 to discover that the trainline website said there was a rail replacement bus for our 940 train to Edinburgh leaving at 0755; this was impossible to get everyone ready in time for but I zoomed down to the station to check and found half dozen people damply pushing suitcases around, no bus, and no ticket staff. Eventually we located a guy in hi vis who said there would be a bus at the original time, so I went back and got everyone packed and we tried again. There were indeed multiple buses (direct or stopping), and we piled on and went through a lot of very soggy countryside - some fields were over the fenceposts in water, and a lot of hay that hadn't been taken in will be ruined, as well as slips and damaged roads - to arrive at Edinburgh. We were later than the train and had to head pretty quickly to the airport, and from then back to Cardiff.
We bought Eurail passes for this trip (you get 15 days free travel over two months; some trains e.g. Eurostar also require compulsory seat reservations, which cost 10-20 euros, but otherwise all trains on a travel day are free; kids' passes also free) and despite Brexit UK trains are included. The Caledonian Sleeper is still expensive, as you have to pay room supplements, but it's cheaper and less subject to dynamic pricing.
The train we intended to take from Cardiff to London got cancelled, so I hustled the kids out of school and got us onto an earlier one, then took the tube from Paddington to Euston, and then sat round in a rather unattractive corner of the station waiting to board. Which we eventually did, with a lot of excitement! Our car was right at the end; the sleeping cars have a single corridor, with the rooms opening off them; we were in two classic rooms, each with two bunks and a basin and an internal interconnecting door. Fancier rooms have their own en suite (and the fanciest have a double bed rather than bunks) or there is a cheaper seat only option. The bunks were firm but reasonably comfortable, we got snacks and Caledonian Sleeper ear plugs & eye masks, and I had TS Elliot's Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat stuck firmly in my head for hours.
Oh it's very pleasant when
You have found your little den
With your name written up on the door.
And the berth is very neat
With a newly folded sheet
And there's not a speck of dust on the floor.
There is every sort of light -
You can make it dark or bright;
There's a handle that you turn to make a breeze.
There's a funny little basin
You're supposed to wash your face in
And a crank to shut the window if you sneeze.
Anyway. Eventually everyone calmed down and slept at least half of the night, and we woke up to an early morning Scottish landscape that was quite beautiful, gilded light over forests and hills; breakfast delivered by the train staff (bread rolls with either sausage or bacon in them; my son is still irked by the fact that "sausage roll" in Wales means soft roll with sausage in it rather than pastry, have had to visit Greggs every so often to buy him a Proper version), and then arrival into Inverness just after 8.30. Our accommodation wasn't ready yet as the previous guests were still checking out, but the owners met us at the station to collect our bags and gave us some food recommendations to try out. We ambled slowly through the streets, which were pretty quiet, and ended up at a cafe called Wild Pancakes; the pancakes seemed relatively tame but did taste good.
We caught the bus to Culloden and went through the museum, which was small but well set-up. There was a children's puzzle trail where you had to find answers to questions, take the first letter of each, and rearrange them to find the name of a notorious spy who betrayed the Jacobites (FotH enthusiasts will not need the actual answers!), and the museum goes chronologically through the events, often splitting so the Jacobite experience is on one side of the room and the English on the other. At the battle itself there's a large room with screens on all four sides, showing an re-enactment of the start of the battle, which is well done and also rather depressing when you see how badly off the Jacobites were (position, readiness, resources...). There is a bit about the aftermath but not much; mostly it jumps to the preservation of the site and the creation of the museum. There was also an an area with staff and one woman was going through the typical battle kit of a Jacobite soldier vs an English soldier vs an English officer. I thought this was very interesting! The English officer's kit had things like a clay stick that you heated in the fire and then used to set the curls on your wig, and a slotted board that you put around your jacket buttons so you could polish them without damaging the jacket. She also had a set of playing cards from the era - no numbers/letters on them (too much illiteracy), and without the double heads on the face cards.
I wandered a bit round the battlefield itself and would have spent more time there, but my kids were a lot more over things than I was, and also some heavy clouds were drawing in. We bussed back, had a late lunch/early dinner, and went back to our accommodation. This was a house in the centre of Inverness called "Jacobite's Retreat"; built from stone salvaged from Cromwell's fort in 1672, used a a sanctuary for Jacobites fleeing Culloden (alas, not successfully; they were caught and executed), and in addition to being historically fascinating also right next door to Leaky's Secondhand Bookshop. The owner left all these delicious local foods for us (a cheese platter, fresh juices, organic milk, oatcakes and sourdough bread) and it was very comfortable. I eventually made it next door and found two whole shelves of DK Broster, plus an assortment of other treasures (I dithered over the Jane Duncans and eventually decided against them, also no Worrals, but I did pick up a hb of Richard Hillary's The Last Enemy as well as Broster's Almond, Wild Almond and A Fire of Driftwood). By now it was raining heavily and we stayed in for the rest of the night.
On Saturday I'd booked a day-long minibus tour around Loch Ness. To get to the pick-up involved crossing the Ness River, which looked quite high; the guide apologised for the weather and took us to the first point on the trip, our first glimpse of the loch. The rain was persistent and the temperature was about 8 degrees; naturally there were people swimming in the loch itself (wiry over 50s wild swimming types, no wetsuits). We then went on to the Falls of Foyers. If you look online you can see pictures of a pretty but fairly sedate waterfall, with grumblings about how local hydroelectric power schemes have diverted water and significantly reduced the flow. This was not an issue when we were there - the waterfall was massive, turbid and more brown than white, with water spray everywhere. The guide said he'd never seen anything like this before.
In hindsight, possibly we should have paid more attention to this. Instead, we drove on, past the burnt-out shell of a house that belonged to Aleister Crowley and was then bought by Jimmy Page, and on to Fort Augustus. This is basically a tourist trap (massive car park for the coaches, cafes of dubious quality, souvenir shops selling Nessie trinkets) and although I did like looking at the Caledonian Canal lock gates, from a FotH viewpoint the whole place is very off-putting! We were supposed to go on but a tree was down on the road, so the guide organised for us to join a boat tour of the loch (this was included in the tour but was supposed to be later, on a smaller boat going around Urquhart Castle) while this was cleared. This was very polished, very touristy, and very much about the Loch Ness monster (they do a lot of showing sonar readings), and although I did get to see some nice bits of scenery it was not my thing. The tour we were on was much better and I liked the guide's wry sense of humour, plus he did not incessantly make jokes about whisky.
The road was cleared when we got back, and we went briefly by Urquhart Castle (very pretty) and Invermoriston (extremely damp, with a wildly surging river), and by now news was coming in of widespread flooding, with a month's worth of rain in a day across the Highlands. All trains south of Inverness were cancelled. Our original travel plan - to train to Edinburgh the next day and then fly back to Cardiff from there - looked dubious. We squelched dismally back to our accommodation (I had stupidly only brought sneakers with me, so had wet feet all day) and then I sprinted out across the Ness again to pick up fish and chips, as nowhere was delivering due to the weather.
We spent the evening playing board games and trying to work out alternative travel routes back. I woke up at 730 to discover that the trainline website said there was a rail replacement bus for our 940 train to Edinburgh leaving at 0755; this was impossible to get everyone ready in time for but I zoomed down to the station to check and found half dozen people damply pushing suitcases around, no bus, and no ticket staff. Eventually we located a guy in hi vis who said there would be a bus at the original time, so I went back and got everyone packed and we tried again. There were indeed multiple buses (direct or stopping), and we piled on and went through a lot of very soggy countryside - some fields were over the fenceposts in water, and a lot of hay that hadn't been taken in will be ruined, as well as slips and damaged roads - to arrive at Edinburgh. We were later than the train and had to head pretty quickly to the airport, and from then back to Cardiff.
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Date: 2023-10-18 09:48 am (UTC)(I saw that you're in Denmark now! If you venture up into Sweden, do let me know. I live in Gothenburg.)