The Scotland trip - booking train journeys

Now that all the essentials for a relaxing sleep are booked, it’s time to crack on and get the tickets for the trains.

To be perfectly honest with you, the peculiarities of the British rail system and the costs involved never cease to amaze me. First of all, there are more train operators than I have fingers on one hand.
Secondly, if you do not book in advance whenever you can, it shows that you are complete fool because a little bit of planning can save you a whole lot of money. 

If you have the luxury of being able to plan ahead enough to know what train you will be taking, make sure to book it weeks in advance. What am I saying, even months in advance. And while we are at it, make sure to check if first class is not cheaper than standard. Yes, you heard correctly! And trust me, if you can travel first class on longer distances, do it. It is very much worth it.

That being said, I have booked first class for the train from London to York with Grand Central and from Glasgow to London with Virgin.
For the journey from York to Edinburgh, standard class in a quiet coach should suffice. For all the other trips I stick to standard class only, since they are small regional trains where the price for the first class ticket is out of sync with the comfort one gets.

All the train operators have the option of either sending me the ticket via snail mail or picking them up at the station with a booking reference. Since I am booking very well in advance and I might be pressed for time once I get to the stations, I have them send me the tickets via snail mail. Life is good!

The Scotland trip - sleep easy

Since Glasgow is at the end of the holiday line, I will only stay one night.
I could stay two nights, return home on a Sunday evening and go back to work on Monday, but my sensible self says that it would be wiser to come home on a Saturday evening and to rest on the Sunday. Since I am a member of the A-club, I quickly book the Novotel in Glasgow. It is the cheapest hotel on the trip, but it looks decent enough.
All my accommodations are now booked and that is a pretty good feeling.

The Scotland trip - putting the puzzle together

I have been looking for hotel rooms in Edinburgh for quite some time now. There are only a few which really convince me. After spending several hours comparing their ratings and locations, I am now down to three hotels which strike me as "good enough", "reasonably priced" and "within walking distance of all the essential tourist places".

It is a difficult decision, but the hotel with the swimming pool wins. 
4 star hotel, 3 nights, £360 total - booked. 
The hotel in Ardlui is now booked as well. The room has a view onto the lake and that sounds pretty lovely to me. I just hope that the sun will shine, preferably in the morning, just for 30 minutes or long enough to take a few lovely pictures.
Kaaaa-tching! 

Now I will need to sort out the accommodation in Inverness since the capacities there get fewer by the hour. I am tempted to take the Ramada, since it is bang in the town centre. A double room at the Ramada costs £260 for two nights. No breakfast. That is a bit steep.

I am changing tack and look for B&Bs. There is a lovely one not too far from the station on the banks of the river Ness. The ratings are very good. On their website I see that doubles cost between 35 to 50 pounds a night, depending on the weekday and double or single occupancy. It sounds great, so I enter the dates to check their availability.

Lo and behold, there is one room left – £240 for two nights. It would include breakfast. I frown. What happened to £35 to £50?
I keep looking and find another B&B which costs £120 including breakfast, for two nights, double bedroom with single occupancy… that one is on the banks of the river as well and the ratings are also very good. That is pretty convincing so I book it in a flash.

The Scotland trip - time to mull things over

Eureka! Holidays are approved.
I want to book the tickets for the steam train but there are no first class tickets available anymore. Drat and double drat! Should I compromise and book second class? Or should I turn the trip around, go counterclock-wise and check the availability for the train then? 
I really need to reassess the situation, considering that the way the trip is put together now, I will spend more time in Glasgow than in Edinburgh, I get to do Fort William to Mallaig once and I will pay a lot of money for the trips London – Glasgow and Edinburgh – York – London.

Fair enough. Three good reasons to think the planning over. So, I check what happens if I go counterclockwise. Edinburgh first, next Inverness, Dornie, Mallaig, Fort William, Glasgow, London.

It’s 23:45 and way past my bedtime but I am chin-deep in tabbed Chrome pages and the Excel sheet. Why, oh why did I not buy a second monitor yet?

Ok, first class on the Jacobite would be available on the new date.

I could book a first class trip from Mallaig to Fort William, but it would be the additional summer steam train which leaves Mallaig late and arrives in Fort William even later. 
I would have a lot of time to kill in  Mallaig which is a very small town and if the weather is bad - which is always a possibility in Scotland - that important leg of the journey will be pretty much ruined.

I do not like that thought at all.

There is also the normal, earlier, train from Mallaig to Fort William. It would make much more sense to take that one. I could already check out what one of the most beautiful train journeys in the world is like. If the sun is shining, I should be able to marvel at beautiful late afternoon scenery. And the next day, I would be doing the trip on the steam train, relaxed and rested.

Now, this is a thought I can live with!

To get from Mallaig to Glasgow, I could take a fairly late and normal train and arrive rather late in the evening... as in minutes before witching hour late. I am not comfortable with that. I would have an awful lot of time to kill in Mallaig. And I don’t quite fancy walking around Glasgow in the dark. I have heard that it can be quite dodgy.
The alternative is simply too hard to resist. Rather than booking a single first class journey on the Steam train (£46), I can book a return journey (£52). 
Once I am back in Fort William, I will get onto the late train towards Glasgow and stop somewhere en route for the night. After a bit of research, I come across an interesting-looking hotel in Ardlui, on the northern tip of Loch Lomond. The hotel offers rooms with views onto the lake. I am checking the reviews for the hotel and it all sounds pretty decent, but I am not booking it just yet.

I still need to make sure that I have a decent roof over my head in Fort William. I am panicking ever so slightly as I find that the hotels and B&Bs are pretty much booked. The ones which are still available have either just single beds or very mixed reviews. I discard the idea of the single bed options, as they are expensive in relation to the doubles and I dislike single beds, because I am fairly tall and used to doubles. It's my holidays, I do not want to sleep in a cramped place.
After some frantic searching I find a hotel, just one train station away from Fort William which still has 2 doubles left. I am booking one of them as quickly as I can.

It's really time to go to bed now, it is almost 1:30 in the morning and I have to go to work tomorrow.

The Scotland trip - still waiting for the green light

Holidays not yet approved. :-(
Checked the Jacobite Steam train webpage again. There are still first class tickets for the day that I want to travel.