I’ll just say now that we made all the trains just fine, though it was touch and go at Edinburgh's Waverly Station. Breakfast is included in the room rate at Lakes Lodge, but not served until 7:45am. That would not work, the guy told us we should just show up early and ask for something like cereal. I went up twice. The first time at 7am there was no one upstairs. At 7:15am, I found a woman in reception and asked her, she said yes. She made us tea and coffee, offered toast and a cooked to order breakfast, but we had enough with cereal and bananas and drink and yogurt. By that time the Asian family of 3 who had been on our tour yesterday afternoon had also arrived to ask for an early breakfast, so we just finished up and left. We went down and got our bags and came upstairs and returned our keys. The walk back to the station was uphill this time and seemed longer! We were there a few minutes early and it was the school bus run! This was the Transpennine Express commuter train again. In Oxenholme, we only had to cross the platform again to get the Virgin train to Edinburgh. Edinburgh was were we almost didn't make the ScotRail train to Inverness. We booked this trip online in advance and picked up all the tickets at a Euston Station Fast Ticket machine in London. We paid £64 for the both of us to take trains from Windermere to Inverness.
When I booked this Virgin train from Oxenholme to Edinburgh,
they told me there were no forward facing seats from Edinburgh to Inverness. In fact, we did have to roust
someone from our reserved seats and they were backward facing. It was a long
couple of hours, but at least we were on the shady side.
We stopped 3 times before we got off the Virgin train. No one
checked our tickets! At the Haymarket stop, a preschool joined our train. They loaded
4-child massive strollers as well as loose toddlers into the vestibules of the
first 3 cars (we were in B) so we were trapped. We only had 7 minutes to get
from Platform 2 in the middle of a preschool to Platform 16. There was a
deficit of signage here and we couldn’t get past the turnstiles with our
tickets for some reason, but a worker came and checked our tickets and let us
through. We were the last ones to jump on just before they closed the doors and it left. I guess that is all
that matters. This is a ScotRail train. Interestingly, there was nothing to
indicate when we left England and entered Scotland. I knew we had because I
told Clay I started seeing a lot of Shetland ponies. He didn’t think that had
anything to do with anything, but when we got off the train in Edinburgh, he
agreed we were in Scotland.
We should get to Inverness in about 4 hours. We are facing
forward in a booth with a table with a mother and teenage daughter. They were
staked out on the whole table when we arrived. We have claimed about 35% of it
by now. They seem unwilling to cede any additional territory. I guess I won’t
feel too bad about spreading my infection to them now. See how everything
always works out?
We have about 2 more hours on this train. I don’t have
anywhere to put my feet and my right (Parkinson’s) foot is cramping up. I will
have to figure out at least how to get my shoe off and then back on. It was sunny
and cool when we left Windermere, now it is low clouds and light rain. We have
had really good luck with the weather so far and will hope that it holds. The
Australian woman on our tour of the Lakes District told us she had been on a
CIE Tour of Ireland 2 weeks ago and that it had poured rain for her entire 8
day visit. Geez.
We ate snack food on the train. I had a protein bar with
water. Clay bought a Diet Coke from the trolley when it came by once and ate
snack food we were carrying. We saw a big whisky distillery with an awesome big old
building at one of our train stops in Dalwhinnie.
So we have the afternoon in Inverness. The hotel we booked
is only a few blocks from the train station/bus station. Tomorrow afternoon we
meet the bus for the Lord of the Glens there. More later.
I am feeling much better today. I have my voice back.
Hopefully, the worst is over. We got to Inverness on schedule and walked the
few blocks to the McDougal Clansman. (I'm sorry that somehow we have no pictures of this hotel or our room!) Since we meet the bus to the Lord of the
Glens at 2:30pm, we’ll have a leisurely morning here tomorrow and we are
overdue one. The hotel has a full breakfast included again but we’ll be able to
fully enjoy it tomorrow. Breakfast is served from 8am to 9:15am. Checkout is
11am but they said they will store our bags for us after that. Our room, number 5, is up one floor from the ground and the window has a street light directly in front of it. It never got dark here! The room was quiet, clean, large and comfortable. Strangley, it has a set of bunk beds and a double bed which we shared last night. It has a low chest of drawers with a little closet and 2 chairs and 3 bedside tables. The bathroom is up a step and has another tiny funky shower. Again, it was a very convenient location for us and fine for a night. I feel like I am staying in the Leaky Cauldron. The tilted floors and stairs, the maze-like halls with little extra steps up and down. Everything creaks. We paid £60 for the night here with breakfast and wireless Internet access included.
After we checked in to our room and dropped our luggage we
hustled down Church St. to the right of the McDougal Clansman and met the man
in the kilt at 3pm for a £6pp historical walking tour. This was Cameron
with Happy Tours. He told us that Loch Ness was about 6 miles away and flows
North out to the Irish Sea by the River Ness that flows through Inverness. The
tour was alright. Clay enjoyed it more than I did. We shared it with another
mother and daughter pair. We saw the center of old town, the steeple of the
toll booth, the town hall, the Inverness Castle, the cathedral and the River
Ness. We didn’t go inside any of the buildings on the tour, but it ended at the
cathedral so we went in there. Inverness is a pretty little city that rolls up
the central city sidewalks after 6pm. We had dinner at Hootanannny’s at about
5pm and they don’t serve dessert. We walked to a cupcake shop, a mall food
court, Marks & Spencer and all were locked up and shut down. We enjoyed our
Scottish food at Hootananny’s. I had a Highland beef and Red Kite Ale pie with scalloped potatoes and
peas. Clay had venison meatballs with new potatoes. He ate it and finished
mine. It was all good. Just hated to miss dessert! Hootananny's is famous for live music as well as good local Scottish food, so we made sure to eat early before the music crowds arrived.
It doesn’t look like there is a distillery here, which seems
shocking. We saw one from the train at the Dalwhinnie stop and I was sure there
must be one here, but it seems not. So, I don’t know what we’ll do tomorrow but
sleep in and have a big breakfast at our leisure.