Hostage in Edinburgh!

Hostage in Edinburgh

Well we've arrived at John O'Groats following a relatively straightforward journey. That is, except the small matter of managing to get ourselves locked in a train on the platform at Edinburgh!

We left Bristol Temple Meads promptly at 6.15, and Andy very quickly set about negotiating a first class upgrade. This could already be candidate for the top idea award - by the time we got to Leeds, cattle class was full to the seams and had developed an interesting aroma....

We arrived in Edinburgh on time, then Scot Rail continued to excel themselves in how not to run a train company by adding, removing and finally breaking their coaches. Once they managed to open the train doors, we were then asked to move to the front of the train as the coach we were in was apparently not coming to Inverness! Cue much confusion, a near scuffle with a do-gooder bystander and we set off 20 minutes late and illegally abandened bikes. Cue a rather embarrasing discussion with the guard and the bikes were moved, enabling us to continue our bizarre journey with a large sleepy German Shepherd dog.

A quick change at Inverness, the highlight of which was Andy W confusing the overly officious ticket inspector, and we set about the 4 hour journey to Thurso - German Shepherd in tow. Also on board was a fellow end to ender called Paul. He had seen our blogspot on Google and was quick to tell us that we had reserved the only bike spaces on the train meaning that he had to send his bike in advance to John O'Groats. Being the kind citizens that we are, we let Paul share our taxi from Thurso to John O'Groats.

So an early start for us tomorrow morning to find the elusive 'finger post' and start our adventure...