Travel day is upon us

May 29
Well another travel day is upon us.  Today we move on to Scotland.

The day started out well, we were up early, checked out of our accommodation and made our way to Exeter to return our car and catch the train to Edinburgh. We had plenty of time  to have breakfast, pick up our tickets and find our correct platform.  Then the fun started.

We were told our train was going to be delayed about 40 minutes due to "earlier problems on the line".  But, the time kept getting extended and extended.  Ours was not the only train having timing issues.  It was a bank (stat) holiday weekend in England, and there was a free 3 day concert in a town near Exeter were 50,000 people where attending, and the weather was absolutely gorgeous.  A recipe for all kinds of things going wrong.

Then we were told our train would be arriving but that it was no longer going to be a thru train - we would have to transfer to another train at Bristol-Temple-Mead.  After consulting with the station crew we opted to take the 11:23 (one hour later than intended) train which would be a thru train.

Decision made, then came the announcement that it too was running late.  Long story  short, we finally boarded a train at 12:07, 1 hr and 40 minutes later than we planned.  We managed to snag a couple of seats but people who got on the train after us had to stand.  Because of all the delays and cancellations there was a backlog of passengers needing to get to their destinations.  For over 6 hours of our journey there were people standing in the aisles in all the cars and at least 10 people in each vestibule.  Also, it was next to impossible for the train staff to provide a food and beverage service.  What a nightmare!  You could not get up and walk around.  People had reserved seats for various portions of the journey, so there was a constant shuffle of people in and out of seats.  Oh, and this train had to be diverted to a different track for a portion of the trip, because of a train stalled on it!

We were fortunate in that people had either not reserved the seats we were in or they saw the grey hair and allowed us to stay in the seats we occupied.  There was only one small portion of the trip that we shared the seats with a young man and it was not a hardship as it was nice to get up for a while.  The bathrooms were intermittently working as well, so that added to everyones discomfort.  Thru all of this though, I was amazed at how well people handled it.  There was little or no grumbling as people just seemed to accept that this was the way it was and grumpling would not change anything.

We arrived in Edinburgh about 9:30 (3 hours later than we had planned), made our way to the airport, got our rental car and headed to the hotel about 20 miles from Edinburgh to a town called Dunfermline.  Then we crashed for the night.

Note to self:  try to avoid changing locations whenever possible!!