The Scotland trip - waiting for the green light

My holidays have not been approved yet. Will have to chase this up. First class tickets for the steam train are still available for my day of choice. 

The Scotland trip - get things going

I have asked for holidays and put together an Excelsheet with all the dates and the locations. 

The whole trip will be done mostly by train to see as much as possible of the countryside and to enjoy a more old-fashioned way of travelling. After loads of to and fro, I have decided to travel clockwise with the following stops:
Brighton - London - Glasgow - Fort William - Dornie - Inverness - Edinburgh - York - London - Brighton (London and York will only serve as a stops to change trains.)
I am not 100% happy with this itinerary because the stay in Edinburgh will be shorter than I originally planned, since I only have 8 days at my disposal.
I can’t book anything yet, because I will be trouble if the holidays don’t get approved. The main highlight of the journey is looking good because there are still first class seats available for the trip from Fort William to Mallaig on the Jacobite Steam train. These tickets go very fast, so booking them is my priority.

To make matters more difficult, I have added further requirements to make this trip utterly individual.
I want to travel with Grand Central from York to London, after seeing one of their trains in King’s Cross station. Grand Central is a small train operator with limited services, but for some reason, they stirred my curiosity. And since I prefer to do things properly, I have decided that this trip is going to be done in 1^st class as well. 

The Scotland trip - the idea

A little more than a year ago, I went home to Germany to spend my first Easter in 4 years with my family. It was a nice little treat, made possible by the fact that my previous company had made me redundant and I had a wealth of spare time on my hands. 
My mother had a few brochures for bus travels all over Europe stacked next to the TV. I browsed them and came across bus tours to Scotland. Now,I am not too fond of bus tours and doing them from Germany when living in the UK was utterly pointless. But I got quite a bit of inspiration out of the destinations they had chosen. Soon I went from browsing brochures to browsing web pages in order to get more information. Within a matter of 2 days, I knew that I wanted to spend a few days in Edinburgh and Inverness. I wanted to travel on the train to Kyle of Lochalsh. A trip on the Jacobite Steam train from Mallaig to Fort William was on the list as well. And last but not least, I wanted to go to Glasgow as well. Back then, time was certainly not a problem. The funding was. After all, I was out of work and had no cash flow to speak of. I briefly considered booking a tour with an English company, because it was financially feasible but it just did not feel right. If I were to do this, I wanted to be fully in charge of the itinerary, deciding where I would stay and for how long. I wanted to put together my own tour. The trouble was that I simply did not have a thousand pounds to spare to travel through the highlands for 10 days.Before I knew it, I was back to being employed. The job was not well-paid, but it was better than a kick in the teeth. I was back to square 1 – very little money, no time.

At the end of 2010, I got a better job with a decent salary and a fair holiday allowance, but was required to travel for a few weeks to do training on the job. Once I got back to the UK, the idea of going to Scotland for a holiday was put to the front of the queue of plans again. And this is where I am now. I need to start planning and get serious about it. Time to get the itinerary together and ask for holidays.