Destination : Edinburgh, Capital of Scotland
Onward trip : 28-Feb-2004, Saturday ; 5:55 AM from London Kings X (read as Kings Cross)
Return trip : 01-Mar-2004, Sunday ; 9AM arriving from Edinburgh Waverly
So the plan was to reach the city by 11 and then, finish the visits and stay there for the night( as there was no night trains)
You notice something wrong with the plan? Unfortunately, I didn't. I didn't see that March 1st is Monday and this year Feb. has 29! I realised it on Thursday night! Got a permission from the office comfortably to come late to office on Monday. The problem now is that, I am already lost. I have two choices: Either to cancel the reservations and change the plan, or stay there for two nights instead of one. Anyway I will loose money! If I cancel, I have to pay almost the same amount extra! That is the rule with railways here.
But my sleep took care of making the choice! I slept till 5 and literally ran to get hold of all the buses and tubes I could get, to catch the train. But tubes behave funny on weekends. They cut down the service, close stations, and all that sort of funny things happens! So not to tell more, I missed the train and it was 6:15 by the time I reach the station! I went to the reservation counter to ask what next. The clerk advised me that I can carry on with the journey paying 46 pounds more! So I ended up paying 46 pounds extra for over the original 53 pounds! The only advantage was, I can go in any train and come back in any train. The start was not good, not good at all!
6:45AM: The train for Glasgow via Edinburgh starts with me in coach F, in a left side seat with no one in my aisle seat( till the end of the journey). There is no crowd as usual. The reservation only saves you money, it has nothing to do with availability during these times. This train is supposed to be faster than the one I missed and is expected to reach my destination by 11:33, calling at Peterborough, Durham, York, Newcastle, Berwick-Upon-Tweed etc.( 'calling at' means 'stopping at'). Nearly an hour after the journey started, I could see snowflakes on the way and it starts increasing and when we reached Newcastle, it was some 5-6 inches of snow! The journey has started badly, and now snow is going to complete the episode! But from inside the train, it is a dream scenery with both sides full of snow and snowfall still continuing! You could see all in black and white( because roads are still black and all the rest is white :) ) !
To my surprise, the snow started decreasing and by the time I reached Berwick-upon-Tweed, it was a new Earth and new Sky! I have North sea on my right, and road with meadows and rocks in between the rail and the sea, it was another phase of the beautiful journey, and the sky is clear and it is sunny! The sea continues to be there till Edinburgh.
I was making my plans for making up my loss in the morning. The journey was worth spending that money, but still I need some more to make sure it happened for good. So decided to change my plan. I will start the return journey by Sunday evening, will take train at 5:30 and will be back in London by 10:20. That will save me one day's rent in B&B (Bed & Breakfast). Also, I will be fresh to be back in office after a good sleep than peeping in after a long journey in the middle of the day. The balance sheet matches with the saving in B&B itself will be 30 pound and for the rest 16, I got a memorable journey and with a good sunny day, I can write it off as a bad debt!
The train reached Edinburgh in time. I landed in Edinburgh, no idea what it looks like, how the people will be, where to stay..... the list of issues are still in front of me. All I had was a list of places to be visited, taken from net and some hotels listed in net. The weather forecast report taken from net was positive with sunny days, but may be the temperature will drop to negatives at night. But no snow was predicted.
With all those issues in front of me, I will stop for this week.
