Friday morning was the last cog in the wheel in terms of planning our summer’s European rail adventure: three weeks, seven countries, and eleven trains.  You’ll of course be hearing more about this trip in due course.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been watching various European  train operators’ websites like a hawk, waiting for the release date for each leg and managing to grab pretty good fares, most of the time.  The haul includes two £19 bargain berth tickets for our first journey, the Scotrail sleeper to London.  There’s always a sense of pride and achievement in grabbing those elusive cheap tickets.

One of the advantages of our trip, I reasoned, was that by not spending an overnight in London either outbound or coming home, we would avoid any adverse impact of the Olympics, which will be bringing various shades of chaos to the UK’s capital in the month of July.

However, I was nearly caught napping a few weeks back when Eurostar released their tickets for during the Olympic period well ahead of the normal schedule, and I only discovered this by chance via a retweet from the indispensable Man in Seat 61.  I moved quickly, and managed to get our return Eurostar tickets before they’d got too expensive.

The Olympics reared its ugly head again last week, which was the scheduled release for the final part of our journey: the London to Inverness sleeper that would take us home at last after our three week adventure, just a few short hours after that hastily grabbed Eurostar journey.

I thought I knew what I was doing, as I was following all my own advice on the way to prepare for the cheapest fares.  9am on the alloted morning came and went, as did the customary tweet from Scotrail saying that the daytime and sleeper booking horizon was now open for the week in July that I was aiming for.  But there was no sign of the bargain berths.  I waited, refreshed my browser, waited and refreshed again, and even tried other browsers just in case.  There was no sign of the new week’s worth of tickets.  I twice tweeted Scotrail over the course of the morning to ask if they knew what was happening.  I got no response either time.

Then I saw a tweet reply from them to another Twitter user, saying  ”Hi, we have referred the matter to our Bargain Berth Support team”.  I expanded the message and they had been asked the same question I’d asked.  I’m not sure why this other user got a reply and I didn’t.  I was starting to think Scotrail was ignoring me, or it was a great conspiracy to stop me getting those magic £19 tickets.

I googled “bargain berth support team”, trying to dispel images of a Bond baddy’s lair where rows of computer operators were desperately trying to stop me getting anywhere near the fares I wanted.  I found two telephone numbers in the extensive FAQ section of the Scotrail website.  I called the first one and after a long wait and some terrible music, I got through to a woman with a thick Indian accent.  Here’s the jist of the conversation:

Me: “Hi, I’m trying to find out what time the bargain berths are going to be released, that were announced to be released today.”

Her: “They are released every week for twelve weeks ahead, though I don’t know what time of day.”

Me: “It’s 9 o’clock in the morning [why did I know this and not the person on the other end of the line?].  And yes, I know they’re released twelve weeks ahead, but those for today have not appeared and I’d like to know what time of day they’re going to be released.”

Her: “I’m afraid I don’t have this information, I can only suggest trying later on in the afternoon.”

I tried the second number, where I was told it was a line purely for other sorts of tickets.  The adviser gave me another number, different from the one I’d tried first.  So I called it.

“Hello, welcome to First Great Western…”

Excellent, not just the wrong department but the entirely wrong train company.  Not a good show from Scotrail, whose customer service I’ve mostly found to be very good.

Importantly, I was still no closer to knowing what time the ticket release would be.  I tweeted Scotrail a third time, being quite careful to be as polite as I could.  Still there was no response.

I’d noticed earlier in the morning that the regular berths were on sale as announced, at much higher – though not, admittedly, outrageously prohibitive – prices.  It was specifically just the bargain berths that for some reason hadn’t gone live.  I had a dilemma – we were both going away for the weekend hillwalking at the end of the afternoon, so wouldn’t have the ability to stay online all evening waiting for the mysterious moment of release.

Should we just go for those pricier ones, or spend the whole day refreshing the bargain berths page with no knowledge of when, or even if, they were going to be released?  The other alternative, which we plumped for when we had a similar problem last year, of taking the overnight bus, was not, after that horrifically cramped experience, even remotely up for discussion.

As the morning turned into afternoon, the situation didn’t change.  Though I did discover that others were now querying Scotrail on Twitter – “all this webpage refreshing is hard work”, complained one tweeter, who certainly had my sympathies.  They were receiving the same response as I eventually did when I tweeted a fourth time: a brief “still awaiting info”.  At least that killed off the conspiracy theory that Scotrail was out to spite my travel plans.

Eventually, though, a tweet came forth from Scotrail pointing the increasingly angry mob of bargain berth hunters to their website, where a statement declared that bargain berth availability could not be guaranteed during the Olympic period.  Brilliant.  So there were no bargain berths after all, which would have been nice to have known before spending a day waiting for them.  The angry mob soon turned on itself in a Hobbesian free for all, as the regular priced sleeper tickets started to disappear quickly, and I missed the most reasonable ones of about £63 each.  Rather than pay over double that, I made the spur of the moment decision to get them on the less popular Aberdeen line, with only a cheap and relatively quick two hour journey onward to Inverness necessary from there.

It was not an ideal solution, and not the smoothest final jigsaw piece in a trip that has been a long time in the planning, but given the circumstances it was the only real option.  But why couldn’t Scotrail have told everyone about the non-availability of bargain berths in advance, or at the very least at the start of the day, to avoid a crowd of people wasting the day awaiting their release?  And why were they being withheld at all during the Olympic period?  It smacked of profiteering.

I emailed Scotrail’s customer services to put these questions to them, and their response which I received this morning, a couple of days later, includes this key information:

These heavily discounted fares are offered to fill spare capacity where that exists and their availability is kept under constant review. Any big events that result in large numbers travelling are likely to impact the availability of such tickets.

Staff are not made aware of how many Bargain Berth tickets are available on any given service. I can appreciate your frustration under the circumstances, however it is made clear that these fares are sold subject to availability.

This is a most unsatisfying response, for two key reasons:

1. The first statement that bargain berths are offered to fill spare capacity is utterly false: they are released at the same time as the regular fares, so there is no way of knowing (except guessing via long-term sales trends) how many berths are going to be left unsold.  I’ve never seen any being released closer to the date of travel, for instance to fill up leftover seats at the last minute.  This leaves me with the conclusion that these cheap tickets are simply being removed in an act of profit maximisation at a time of high demand.

2. That staff are not made aware of how many bargain berth tickets are available on any given service is most odd.  Firstly they do know to some extent, because there are usually up to four at each price band.  And in any case, that’s not the point, because my question was about their existence at all in a certain week, not their number.  Whether or not bargain berths are going to be released at all in any week is a pretty basic piece of information.  If customer service staff, whose job is to inform customers, do not know this basic information, then that demonstrates dreadful customer service management and poor customer engagement.

There is a curious contradiction with the (usually) clockwork release of these elusive fares and the idea that they are subject to availability.  If you’re going to release such excellent value fares regularly, it is entirely understandable that customers will attempt to decipher the logic behind their release.  When that logic appears unclear, and the company appears not to know its own affairs very well, it is not a good sign.

But then if travel is not always as smooth, easy and predictable as we would like, perhaps that’s supposed to be part of the fun…

This webpage more or less describes the route we took, in reverse anyway.  It was hard work – taking us a probably quite sluggish eleven hours in total – but a lovely day, and immensely satisfying to have made it to the end with only a couple of blisters and muscle aches to show for it.

 Starting out with a thirty minute journey from Spean Bridge to Corrour, we were able to take in some of the scenery from the route that is often described as one of the world’s best.  It’s not a line I know well, but it’s certainly lovely, the stretch that we travelled taking in some lovely view of Loch Trieg, a spot we’d soon return to on foot.

From Corrour station (right), site of a notorious scene from Trainspotting, we walked nearly to the rustic and picturesque Loch Ossian hostel (left) where I’ve stayed before (1|2), and then back towards the trainline, Loch Trieg again (below), and then northwards through the Grey Corries.

The weather was mostly good, with warm sunshine and a pleasant breeze that kept the midges at bay.  The only drawback was sharing part of the route with an endless stream of cross country motorcyclists, clearly on some major race.  We crossed the river at one point to get away from them and the smell of burning fuel, only to find that they later did the same, necessitating a second crossing back.

Having shaken off the bikes we took on the one peak of our walk: Stob Ban, standing modestly among the Grey Corries but a challenging climb nevertheless as there was a moderate amount of snow at the top, plus the occasional strong gust.  We took on the comparatively easy east face, but encountered a couple of guys near the top who had, with crampons and ice axes, navigated the much more difficult north face.  They said it was quite hairy.  ”We were making buttons at one point”, one of them said.  I have to confess I had to google the phrase later.

Not that our own ascent wasn’t without its nervous moments.  I’m awful with heights (yes, I don’t quite know how I reconcile this fear with a love of hillwalking either), and the snowy ridge we climbed near the top rendered terrifyingly spectacular views over the steep sides.

Upon (eventually) descending again, a bothy (boasting graffiti from the 1930s) provided a brief respite, before the final two and a half hour slog back to Spean Bridge through a long glen, past the Wee Minister, and through a few gates.

I definitely deserved my beer at the end of it.  I’d been fantasising about my chilled bottle of magnificent limited edition Ardmore Beast all day, and it tasted amazing.

Beer always does though, once you feel you’ve earned it.

The customary haul of photos can be found on Flickr.

Nicole and I were in Skye this weekend, for a few days of seeing family, walking and exploring.

In a refreshing break from the drizzle and grey skies we’ve been experiencing in Inverness of late, it was near-unbroken sunshine out west.  This was good news for photographs, and I’ve uploaded a bundle to Flickr.

I have a pile of copies of my first book, Up The Creek Without a Mullet (I may have mentioned it here once or twice), and decided to run little competitions on each of the social media platforms I am on.  Nothing too complicated: just a case of asking for suggestions as to who should receive a copy and why, with the best idea in my view winning.  No second mention, no reiteration or reminders, just one little message, transmitted once into the busy streams of social media land.

What were the results?

The first day I did it on Twitter.  I had a grand total of zero entries.  This was, I thought, a mild surprise.  I don’t have a huge number of followers on Twitter, but enough to render a handful of half-baked or even half-joking responses.  At least that’s what I thought.  But fair enough, it’s a free social media and frankly it saved me an ever-increasingly expensive stamp.

The second day I did it on Google+.  There was one reshare, but again, no entries.

The third day, I tried my page on Facebook.  I got one entry, which of course won by default.

What does that say?  Well, perhaps nobody pays attention to me.  Or those that want to read the book already have done so.  Or that (in the case of Twitter or Google+) people didn’t know enough about the book to want to put in for it. Or maybe it’s easy to miss things and simply not keep up with the contant stream of bumph that’s out there in the world of social media.

If it’s the latter, it suggests that people are trying to absorb too much information and the only way to get folk to notice what you’re saying is by repeating it.  One thing that mildly annoys me on Twitter is the number of people who will write an article or post and then tweet the link to it a number of times.  ”I get the message”, I want to say, “I follow you for a reason and read your tweets, so there’s no point telling me four or five times about the same thing you’ve posted!”  If you are following someone whose stuff you don’t notice or don’t want to read, then you’re following too many people.  Or the wrong people.

I don’t mind that there weren’t many responses.  It was, after all, just an experiment.  But it proves what a funny place the world of social media can be.

I voted today in the local council elections.  Being something of a politics and electoral systems geek, I always enjoy voting. Especially when it is the Single Transferable Vote, introduced for Scottish councils in 2007.

STV is by far my favourite electoral system, because it is roughly proportional, it gives you multiple representatives (a good thing where a single representative, like with our MPs, may be hated or mistrusted by a signficant minority), and allows you to make preferences rather than a stark, absolute choice.  Politics is about relativity rather than absolutes, and our voting system should reflect that too.

The problem today, however, came in with deciding who to vote for.  I believe our council to be thoroughly deficient, filled mostly with second-rate councillors who lack much in the way of vision and creativity for this city and the wider region.  That’s evident in some of the terrible planning decisions made over the years in Inverness, plus the spectacular lack of leadership in representing our city externally.

From the poorly-managed development and transport infrastructure of our city, to backwards decisions like Inverness’s absurd and repressive midnight curfew, and then of course the disgrace that was the decision about the completion of the city’s bypass that I’ve blogged about before (and will do again in the coming weeks).

Inverness getting its own local authority, like most of Scotland’s other cities, would be a good way of starting to address this mismanagement; would directly-elected mayors.  That’s one constitutional issue where I am impressed by developments in England.

More than anything, then, the council needs fresh blood.  Last time in 2007, when I was living in Glasgow, I gave my first preference to the one SNP candidate and second preference to the Greens.  This time around, as part of the SNP’s nationwide push to win more councils, they are putting up two candidates in a lot of places, including  my constituency here in Inverness – one an incumbent, the other a new face.  The latter got my first preference.

Disappointingly there is no Green candidate to then transfer to, the only other party standing besides the untouchable Labour, Tory and LibDem options being the terrifying Scottish Christian Party.  So my second vote will go not to the incumbent SNP member, but to an independent candidate who is standing again, for whom I have a great deal of time and who I consider an exception to the rabble of incompetence that purvades Highland Council.  It’s the first time I’ve ever rejected the opportunity to vote for an SNP candidate in any election.  What’s happening to me?

The SNP are working hard, I understand, to win Highland Council, as they are in many places, not least in the well-publicised battle for Glasgow City.  STV being a bit more complicated to  count, however, means that the results will not come through until later on Friday by which time I will be away for the weekend.  Perhaps I’ll blog again next week reflecting on what could be some very interesting results.  It’s an exciting time in Scottish politics, and while I don’t hold to the view that these council elections are a litmus for the independence referendum, today’s vote will certainly have an impact on vital local services in the years to come and the relative strength and confidence of the political parties.

Whether or not it will improve the quality of decisions being made about Inverness, however… well, hope springs eternal.

“Don’t let politicians interfere in marriage” the campaign group Scotland for Marriage tells us, at least according to an email someone has forwarded to me that includes the above image.  This is in response to the Scottish Government’s consultation on legalising gay marriage, something the government has expressed they are likely to come down in favour of.

Absolutely.  I couldn’t agree more.  Marriage is something politicians should have nothing to do with.  Imagine – passing laws that might impact on marriage!  A truly dreadful idea!  But to prevent politicians interfering in marriage, I’m afraid we will need to do more than simply prevent gay marriage:

• We need to remove all laws on domestic violence, so often perpetrated within marriages by those who regard spouses as possessions rather than equals, because it’s just political interference.
• We need to repeal all legislation that prohibits forced marriages, because this is simply political interference.
• We need to remove the laws that prevent child marriage, because the right to marry a child is something that politicians have stopped us doing.
• We must get rid of the political decision that polygamy is wrong, because who is a politician to decide how many wives you can have?
• We should stop all this crazy bureaucracy about who can perform a marriage ceremony and when, because the prohibition of sham marriages is just politicians interfering!
• Laws about when and how you can divorce should be scrapped, because any legal protection of your right to leave a marriage is just political interference!
• Laws that incentivise (or indeed de-incentivise) marriage through tax or benefits are just wrong, because that’s just politicians interfering in marriage!
• Any state funding for relationship counselling services should stop now!  Otherwise it’s just “big brother” interfering in our marriages!
• The official registration of marriages by local authorities must stop now, allowing us to declare ourselves married to whoever and whatever we want, whenever we want.  Some bit of paper we’re forced to apply for in advance that tells us that we’re married is just politicians trying to run our lives for us.

I could go on, but I would only devastate myself with the appalling realisation of the extent to which politicians are interfering in marriage.  Right now, in this country, perhaps even in your community and involving people you might know – politicians are dictating how marriage works!  It must stop now!

Save marriage from politicians.  This could be your last chance.

En la pasinta semajnfino, mi partoprenis en la kunkongreso de la Esperantaj asocioj de Britio kaj Skotlando, lokita en Edinburgo. Estis mia unua Esperanto kongreso, kaj estis tre interesa.

Anstataŭ skribanta pri la kongreso per longa blogafiŝo, mi pensis ke mi povis doni nur mallongan liston de mia ĉefaj lernitaĵoj de la kongreso.

Jen…

1. Mi parolas pli malpli bone….

Mi komencis en septembro, lasta jare, kaj ŝajnas al mi ke mi atingis bonan nivelon dum tiu tempo. Kelkaj homoj diris al mi ke mi parolis bone.

2. …sed mi komprenas ke mi havas longan vojon al flueco.

Fakte, multe da homoj neniam atingas ĝin. Partoprenantoj kiu parolis Esperanton antaŭ multaj jaroj priskribis ilin mem kiel eternaj lernantoj. Mi pensas ke estas granda malsameco inter la mallonga vojo de komencado al meza kapablo, kaj la longa vojo de meza kapablo al flueco.

Mi trovis ke mi ne tute komprenis la homojn kiujn mi kunparolis, kaj mi komprenis inter ĉirkaŭ kvarono kaj duono de la kongresaj prelegoj. Kaj pri la prelegoj…

3. Kongresoj eble ŝajnas internevidanta.

La temoj de la afero de la kongreso estis plejparte pri Esperanto mem. Ĉi tio ne estas problemo aŭ kritiko. Estas kompreneble kaj nature, kiam oni kunvenas Esperantistojn, ke ilia saminteresoj temos pri (kaj sola pri?) Esperanto. Do la temoj estis plejparte pri la lingvo kaj sia literaturo, traduko, uzado, plibonigado kaj lernado.

4. Reformo estas konstanta afero en Esperanto.

Eĉ ĉu minoritato aŭ malofta voĉo, mi vidis ke ĉiam estos ideoj, ĉu bonaj ĉu malbonaj, kiu volus ŝanĝi la lingvon. Mi skribos denove (kaj eble iomete frivole) pri ĉi tiu temo baldaŭ.

5. Onia Esperanto vere plibonigos en kongreso.

Dum tri tagoj kiam mi parolis preskaŭ ĉiam en Esperanto, mi kompreneble plibonigis. Okazoj por babilado estas kutime rara por Esperantistoj trans la mondo, do mi komprenas kial homoj ofte antaŭĝojas partopreni en kongreso. Mi trovis ke mia ebleco, komprenado kaj memfido kreskis dum la semajnfino, kaj mi eĉ ekpensis iomete en la lingvo.

6. Parolantoj estas reala komunumo

Kialo por mia plibonigo estas aliaj parolantoj. Ofte, aliaj kongresaj partoprenantoj helpis kaj korektis min, kaj la malnovaj parolantoj gvidis aliajn kiel mi. Estis vera sento de komunumo inter parolantoj, ĉar kvankam ni havis nur Esperanto kiel kunintereso, la naturo de la lingvo ankaŭ donas al multaj homoj interesojn en, ekzemple la internaciismon, lingvojn generale, vojaĝadon, kaj tiel plu. Tial, plaĉas al mi la vorto “samideano”, esprimanta la ideon ke parolantoj kunhavas ne sole lingvon sed ankaŭ mondvido.

Mi eĉ trovis surprizan numbron de kristanoj en la kongreso. En la kongresa diservo dimanĉe, mi nombris ĉirkaŭ kvarono de la tutaj kongresanoj.

7. Esperanto estas bela religia lingvo

Mi jam legis la biblion en Esperanto dum kelkaj monatoj, sed la lingvo estas tre bela aŭdi en la diservo. Esperanto havas la riĉan senton de sentempeco kaj profundo de la latina lingvo, sed ankaŭ havas la komprenpovon de facila, neŭtrala, unuiĝanta lingvo.

Ĝis la sekvonta kongreso!

Se vi trovas erarojn, bonvolu korekti min!

They’re all, I think, prints of paintings by Norman Wilkinson, a famous landscape painter who interestingly, according to his Wikipedia page, was also renowned for wartime camouflage design and even painted a picture for the Titanic.

There are some particularly nice railway posters by him, including this one on the right of Inverness. I recently bought a copy of it from this website to hang up in our house.

Now I don’t buy into any misty-eyed idea of a golden age of travel. If there is one, then it’s today, with global transport and communications mixed with a still-healthy range of hard to reach and unfamiliar places.

That said, there is something appealing about the European and North American portrayal of travel in the first half of the twentieth century: the world was slowly opening up, railways were reaching their heyday, commercial air travel was beginning to (excuse the lazy pun) take off, and factors such as empire, war and industrialisation were making ordinary people aware of the diversity of places and peoples to be found across the world.

One manifestation is the emergence of some great travel writing from that era (Byron, Greene, Orwell et al), but another evocative example is how travel companies captured this spirit of adventure by means of the gorgeous Art Deco styles that were contemporary to the time.

The Highland Literary Salon meets at the Glen Mhor, and it’s sometimes hard during the monthly gatherings not to be distracted by the posters, mulling over how – before the age of truly global communications, package holidays, high-speed rail and low-cost airfares – there was a spirit of romance and adventure about domestic destinations. As Wilkinson’s posters show, you don’t need to travel to the other side of the world to have an adventure or find somewhere “remote”, and I love the way that they convey a sense of escape and exploration despite those beautiful places being, even then, relatively easily accessible from Scotland’s main population centres.

It was an interest in old travel posters that took me last week, for the first time, to the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. It was hosting an exhibition called See Scotland By Train, a collection of railway posters from the nineteenth century to the modern day. It was interesting to see how the styles changed through the years, but how those of the early twentieth century seemed to best capture the sense of adventure that the railways presented.

It’s not just about Scotland, of course. On Flickr recently I stumbled across this marvellous collection of travel posters held by the Boston Public Library in the USA. Portraying locations from across the world, from New Zealand to France and China to Mexico, it is a beautiful and extensive range of posters from the early twentieth century, all conveying something of the exciting and exotic nature of travel. Here are just a few of my favourites:

Of course, some of them are amusing in their dated attitudes and dependence on cliche, but they perfectly capture the era’s sense of wanderlust, an instinct that of course is alive and kicking in this era too. And its just as well, because however evocative travel posters can be, they’re obviously never as good as the real thing.

Though if they help provide that little extra inspiration and motivation to get out there and travel, then all the better. They certainly do for me.

I got back this weekend from a six-day journey down the Inverness to Edinburgh train line.  I stopped at every station, twenty-three in total, including my start and end points.  I tried to spend at least a couple of hours in each place, staying overnight where timetables dictated.  It was an interesting chance to see close up all those stops I would so frequently zip through on the train without really paying them any attention.

I didn’t know most of the places I visited, and so there were plenty surprises along the way as the journey took me to the unknown, the beautiful, the isolated, the depressingly mundane, and the run-down.  I’ve finished the trip with some places I am eager to return to for a deeper exploration, and a few others I’ll be quite happy to never visit again.  Along the way I encountered some interesting people, learned a great deal of local history, walked a colossal amount, visited a few dodgy pubs, randomly bumped into old friends, and took an over-abundance of photos.

In the coming weeks I am going to write the trip up, under the provisional title of “The Next Stop”.  Hopefully it’ll be a story of a journey not just along a railway line but through some often maligned and ignored places that lurk behind Scotland’s better-known side.

I’ll keep you posted.

It’s not really a castle any more – in fact, not even “not really”, more “not at all”.  It’s just a hill, flat at the top, that you think might once have been a good location for a castle.  Which you would be right in thinking, because indeed it once was.

In the thirteenth century, according to both Wikipedia and the plaques adorning the cairn, the castle was where Andrew de Moray raised his standard during the Wars of Independence.  He was a key ally of William Wallace, though died from injuries sustained at the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297.

As I say, there is a cairn, with a couple of plaques and a saltire on a flagpole.  But not much more to indicate its historical importance, nor had I heard of it before.  No doubt in many other countries, sites like this would be part of a nationally-renowned trail, something that commemorates key locations in Scotland’s history.

Not here; such things would be deemed “political”, perceptibly playing into the hands of nationalists.  But what sort of timorous country would be ashamed of a period in its past when it fought for its very survival?  Whether or not one believes that independence for Scotland was right then or is right now, it was certainly an important era in the country’s development which – thanks to the unhelpful romanticism of Braveheart et al – is not properly known.

Now of course, modern Scottish nationalism is a forward-looking movement and not one stuck in the past.  But I can’t help thinking that if – or when – the referendum is won in 2014 and Scotland becomes independent, we’ll see a bit more exploration of our country’s history, turning the subject from a political football into something that is quite normal, as in other countries.  Places like Ormond Castle deserve to be less the possession of romantics and distantly-focussed historical nationalists, and be instead the preserve of the entire country’s heritage.