On the Way to Thurso

Scenes from the Highlands

Scenes from the Highlands

Scenes from the Highlands, the thistle--national symbol of Scotland

Monday, July 26, 2010

We’re off for another train ride. This train is leaving at a more reasonable hour---so we had time for breakfast and checking our gear. We walked down to Queen Street Station to catch our train for Perth. We bought one of those expensive chocolate coffee drinks (a mocha flake) and boarded our train—no confusion today. The ride was pleasant. We had a table and a small enough number of passengers that we had two seats each. The ride to Perth was pretty uneventful. At Perth we had a few minutes before we changed trains, so we bought sandwiches and chips and boarded our second train for Inverness and the far North—Thurso.

The train was also not crowded so we had a pleasant journey. At Inverness we saw some of the ships and businesses involved in the North Sea Oil field. We then followed the coast, cutting across the base of several peninsulas as we went through places like Beauly, Dingwall, Fearn, Invergordon, Tain and Golspie. At Invergordon we saw two oil drilling rigs that were involved with oil exploration in the Cromarty Firth which some locals are not happy about. The train arrived at Helmsdale and turned inland. The train followed a river valley into the highlands and aside from the farms along the river with their hay crops, pastures and sheep the land appeared pretty empty. The further north and up in elevation we went the smaller the number of trees and the greater the number of rocky outcroppings. The track parted company with the main highway and the number of people in evidence shrank still further, Most of the stops along this part of the line are by request only. If there are no passengers on the platform and if no one on the train requests to get off, the train does not stop. When we stopped at Georgemas Junction, the train reversed and went backwards to Thurso. After Thurso the train goes forward back to Georgemas Junction and then on to Wick, which is the end of the line

Nancy has a great deal of fun trying to take pictures from the train. We had a little two car sprinter train—that’s what it is called. The new camera, although a nice little camera, does not have quite the speed of the good one. It works however. It works well enough to allow Nancy to fill up a 2 g SD cards with lots of pictures. The scenery was beautiful----very desolate in spots.

We got off as scheduled at Thurso which is as far North as you can get by train in Scotland. Even though Wick is the the end of the line, it is further south As we disembarked it started to pour. There were a number of taxi’s, but the people who rushed to get off the train knew what they were doing and grabbed them up quickly---no hesitation. We had intended to walk to the hotel since I had directions. I had thought it was a little strange that when I booked the hotel I asked about walking and the lady at the desk told me it was indeed walkable, but there were plenty of cabs if it was raining. Now we knew why. We caught the last taxi driver who was loading a group and asked if more taxis would be coming; he said that he would return for us. We walked around to the front of the building where we found more people waiting for taxis. Another taxi showed up and a group of four snagged it. That left us and a German couple with limited English skills. They wanted to know when the bus was coming to go to the ferry—like I would know, but I do read signs.. There were no bus signs—not good. We all stood in the doorway out of the pouring rain and waited. Our taxi driver returned, and we asked about the bus….no bus. We gave the German couple the taxi---they had a ferry boat connection to make, and we stayed in our doorway as much out of the pouring rain as possible. Eventually, our cab driver returned to take us to the Park Hotel. He was quite a pleasant man and told us things to see in Thurso.

We arrived at our hotel which was a hotel, not a b and b. We really didn’t care as long as it was clean and quiet. The hotel had recently been remodeled and was quite nice according to our taxi driver. He was correct. The clerk showed us to our room which was in a building out behind the main building. We had room #20. The room was delightful. It had a regular television which Neil enjoyed a great deal. He played the stereotypical male and played with the remote all evening. Okay, it wasn’t all evening because we did go out for dinner and a wee walk.

After we were settled in our room, we rested a bit and then because it was still raining, we opted to eat in the hotel restaurant. Neil had locally caught haddock and chips. I had steak pie and potatoes. We each had a vegetable medley. Quite lovely. After dinner it had stopped raining so we decided to go for a walk. Unwise decision, it started raining again. We did go across the road to the new Tesco grocery and walked around the grocery for a bit. We returned to our room where I read and Neil played with the remote. He did have a good time.

For not having walked very far today, we were certainly tired….must be all of that train riding. Or lack of exercise…

Steps: 2,978