A Wedding in Scotland
We took the Caledonian Sleeper from London Euston to Inverness. The cabin has two berths, upper and lower, the upper accessed by a little ladder. There is a sink and some shelving, a couple of hangers for your coats, and a companion doorway to the cabin next door which is ordinarily locked, but which would be handy if there were four of you travelling together. There is a control for the heating, a switch for the main cabin light and one for each of the berth lights. Once the luggage is stowed there is only enough room for one person at a time to stand in the narrow gap between the berths and the wall. James Bond has had a full-blown punch-up in this sort of space, but in reality it's impossible to turn around without careful planning, let alone swing a fist. You have to take turns to change your underpants in time for dinner, and it takes about an hour.
We planned to eat dinner in the lounge car then retire to our berths, sleep, and awake in Inverness. As it happened we were so hungry ate our emergency sandwiches in our cabin then sampled a "cheese plate" and some merlot in the lounge car. It was a bit tired and shabby, with what looked like damp-stained carpet on the walls, not at all like Murder On The Orient Express, and despite the state of the cheese there was no screaming and dying.
We were in bed by 10pm, passing through somewhere in central England, but we really had no idea because the blind in the cabin was nailed shut. Which was a pity because I was looking forward to waking to a mountainous landscape scrolling past the window in the dawn light and quoting Byron, like in a Peter Greenaway film.
The berths were comfortable enough, the journey was uneventful, but so noisy that sleep was hard to come by. We half-expected to be woken at 2am in Cumbria to be herded onto a replacement bus skirting around flood-damaged track, but when I peeked around the edge of the immovable blinds in the early hours it seems we had already reached Carlisle without mishap. I think of Carlisle as practically Scotland, but we were still only halfway into our journey with six hours travelling left.
Somehow we managed to sleep, and then without any fuss we arrived at Inverness station. Despite the discomfort and constantly interrupted sleep, it seemed impossible that we were already nearly 600 miles from our starting point the night before. Travelling while you're in bed seems quite magical. And the best part is you haven't wasted a day of your precious holiday just transporting yourself from A to B.
We hired a car and, with six hours to kill before our hotel room was ready, took a little trip around Loch Ness. We ate breakfast at The Clansman, a lochside hotel which had a very small selection of hot food for sale. I've never had a greasy sausage roll for breakfast before, but that's only because I haven't lived in Scotland before. The gift shop was all Nessie, Tartans and Bagpipe CDs, and the combination of that and the sausage roll made me a little bit sick in my mouth.
We drank tea beneath louring clouds, in the drizzle, beside the peat-dark waters of the Loch. We saw no plesiosaurs.
Our hotel room at Boat of Garten, some 30 miles from Inverness, was surprisingly commodious yet cosy; one of their newly refurbished rooms with french windows that overlooked a tasteful wooden deck and a tidy lawn that led down to the trackside of the Strathspey Steam Railway. Beyond, the snow-sprinkled Cairngorms loomed attractively. I have stayed in worse places.
The wedding ceremony was short, sweet and secular, and then I found myself cast in the role of Unexpected Official Photographer. I'd only signed up for taking a few informal snaps, but I did my best at short notice, relying on those with more natural authority than me to organise people into formal photogenic arrangements while I complained about the lack of light and fiddled with ISO settings to disguise my lack of competence.
The father of the bride was too infirm and elderly to make a speech (he wasn't expected to), and the best man could only manage a few words ending with "live long and prosper". It looked like he was being a bit of a cunt and couldn't be arsed, but I learned later he was likely far gone on a mix of anti-depressants, alcohol and Star Trek. With no sign of further speeches or organisation, and a clearly less-than-happy happy couple at this stage, C made an impromptu speech and I usurped the best man's authority by leading the traditional toast to the bride and groom. No one seemed to mind, but it did occur to me that the lack of a traditional toast might be a deliberate exclusion and I'd now fucked up their wedding with self-centred attention-seeking and a bunch of under-exposed photographs.
The wedding singer made a good fist of entertaining a mostly empty room, and wasn't averse to letting C duet with him. I danced for the first time in years to demonstrate to the too-cool-for-school middle-aged male contingent that it really doesn't hurt to make a tit of yourself once in a while, and after more confidence-enhancing beers I suddenly had the marvellous and all-consuming idea to perform under-rehearsed magic tricks for an audience far more sober than I was. The least elaborate and most easily repeatable effect proved the most popular, but I guess even that begins to pale when you've seen the same red handkerchief disappear into thin air for the 433rd time in one night. Luckily for all concerned, the groom distracted everyone by baring his arse and dancing to The Smiths' This Charming Man, self-flagellating with his bride's lily bouquet. It was difficult to ignore such a fabulous solo effort, but the £175 bouquet did not survive.
At one point it looked like our little wedding party would join with a coach party in the adjoining room who were enjoying some ceilidh, but apart from a tiny mustachioed man from Bury who told me all about the drumming he did for Canadian TV, the merger never happened. And then everyone went to bed.
We spent our free time driving through Aviemore (not as attractive as you might think, but it has a very cute railway station) and into the Cairngorms. The road through turned out to be closed and we had to turn back, but it was nevertheless picturesque. We wandered around the stunning Loch Morlich on foot, but later I discovered that none of my photographs had been saved. I have no idea why. Probably for the same reason that my Eee PC battery gave up the ghost this week, i.e. technology is shit (especially my Linux Eee PC, which has let me down on every conceivable occasion and is now literally in the bin as I type; I have had enough of it).
We spent our last day in the vicinity of Loch Ness, killing time between check out (noon) and returning the car (5pm). The entire circuit of the Loch is well worth doing, stunningly beautiful landscapes, even in the rain. The road between Foyers and Loch Tarff is breathtaking.
After returning the hire car we had four hours to kill in Inverness. We wandered around some shops until it was time to eat, then ate at a place called The Filling Station, whose attitude to food is exactly what its name suggests. The Caledonian Sleeper left at 9pm and, after a worrying few minutes when the bloke who was supposed to retrieve our luggage from the station's Left Luggage lockers just disappeared into the ether, we managed (just) to be on it. We slept better on the way home, and this cabin had a blind you could open so I got to watch the dawn come up over Milton Keynes and the commuters on the platform got to watch me glide past bollock naked on my bed.
We planned to eat dinner in the lounge car then retire to our berths, sleep, and awake in Inverness. As it happened we were so hungry ate our emergency sandwiches in our cabin then sampled a "cheese plate" and some merlot in the lounge car. It was a bit tired and shabby, with what looked like damp-stained carpet on the walls, not at all like Murder On The Orient Express, and despite the state of the cheese there was no screaming and dying.
We were in bed by 10pm, passing through somewhere in central England, but we really had no idea because the blind in the cabin was nailed shut. Which was a pity because I was looking forward to waking to a mountainous landscape scrolling past the window in the dawn light and quoting Byron, like in a Peter Greenaway film.
The berths were comfortable enough, the journey was uneventful, but so noisy that sleep was hard to come by. We half-expected to be woken at 2am in Cumbria to be herded onto a replacement bus skirting around flood-damaged track, but when I peeked around the edge of the immovable blinds in the early hours it seems we had already reached Carlisle without mishap. I think of Carlisle as practically Scotland, but we were still only halfway into our journey with six hours travelling left.
Somehow we managed to sleep, and then without any fuss we arrived at Inverness station. Despite the discomfort and constantly interrupted sleep, it seemed impossible that we were already nearly 600 miles from our starting point the night before. Travelling while you're in bed seems quite magical. And the best part is you haven't wasted a day of your precious holiday just transporting yourself from A to B.
We hired a car and, with six hours to kill before our hotel room was ready, took a little trip around Loch Ness. We ate breakfast at The Clansman, a lochside hotel which had a very small selection of hot food for sale. I've never had a greasy sausage roll for breakfast before, but that's only because I haven't lived in Scotland before. The gift shop was all Nessie, Tartans and Bagpipe CDs, and the combination of that and the sausage roll made me a little bit sick in my mouth.
We drank tea beneath louring clouds, in the drizzle, beside the peat-dark waters of the Loch. We saw no plesiosaurs.
Our hotel room at Boat of Garten, some 30 miles from Inverness, was surprisingly commodious yet cosy; one of their newly refurbished rooms with french windows that overlooked a tasteful wooden deck and a tidy lawn that led down to the trackside of the Strathspey Steam Railway. Beyond, the snow-sprinkled Cairngorms loomed attractively. I have stayed in worse places.
The wedding ceremony was short, sweet and secular, and then I found myself cast in the role of Unexpected Official Photographer. I'd only signed up for taking a few informal snaps, but I did my best at short notice, relying on those with more natural authority than me to organise people into formal photogenic arrangements while I complained about the lack of light and fiddled with ISO settings to disguise my lack of competence.
The father of the bride was too infirm and elderly to make a speech (he wasn't expected to), and the best man could only manage a few words ending with "live long and prosper". It looked like he was being a bit of a cunt and couldn't be arsed, but I learned later he was likely far gone on a mix of anti-depressants, alcohol and Star Trek. With no sign of further speeches or organisation, and a clearly less-than-happy happy couple at this stage, C made an impromptu speech and I usurped the best man's authority by leading the traditional toast to the bride and groom. No one seemed to mind, but it did occur to me that the lack of a traditional toast might be a deliberate exclusion and I'd now fucked up their wedding with self-centred attention-seeking and a bunch of under-exposed photographs.
The wedding singer made a good fist of entertaining a mostly empty room, and wasn't averse to letting C duet with him. I danced for the first time in years to demonstrate to the too-cool-for-school middle-aged male contingent that it really doesn't hurt to make a tit of yourself once in a while, and after more confidence-enhancing beers I suddenly had the marvellous and all-consuming idea to perform under-rehearsed magic tricks for an audience far more sober than I was. The least elaborate and most easily repeatable effect proved the most popular, but I guess even that begins to pale when you've seen the same red handkerchief disappear into thin air for the 433rd time in one night. Luckily for all concerned, the groom distracted everyone by baring his arse and dancing to The Smiths' This Charming Man, self-flagellating with his bride's lily bouquet. It was difficult to ignore such a fabulous solo effort, but the £175 bouquet did not survive.
At one point it looked like our little wedding party would join with a coach party in the adjoining room who were enjoying some ceilidh, but apart from a tiny mustachioed man from Bury who told me all about the drumming he did for Canadian TV, the merger never happened. And then everyone went to bed.
We spent our free time driving through Aviemore (not as attractive as you might think, but it has a very cute railway station) and into the Cairngorms. The road through turned out to be closed and we had to turn back, but it was nevertheless picturesque. We wandered around the stunning Loch Morlich on foot, but later I discovered that none of my photographs had been saved. I have no idea why. Probably for the same reason that my Eee PC battery gave up the ghost this week, i.e. technology is shit (especially my Linux Eee PC, which has let me down on every conceivable occasion and is now literally in the bin as I type; I have had enough of it).
We spent our last day in the vicinity of Loch Ness, killing time between check out (noon) and returning the car (5pm). The entire circuit of the Loch is well worth doing, stunningly beautiful landscapes, even in the rain. The road between Foyers and Loch Tarff is breathtaking.
After returning the hire car we had four hours to kill in Inverness. We wandered around some shops until it was time to eat, then ate at a place called The Filling Station, whose attitude to food is exactly what its name suggests. The Caledonian Sleeper left at 9pm and, after a worrying few minutes when the bloke who was supposed to retrieve our luggage from the station's Left Luggage lockers just disappeared into the ether, we managed (just) to be on it. We slept better on the way home, and this cabin had a blind you could open so I got to watch the dawn come up over Milton Keynes and the commuters on the platform got to watch me glide past bollock naked on my bed.