It’s late at night and we’ve had a long, long day. We’re on our honeymoon….an adventure by train.

We were lucky enough to have been given a gift of a few days away as a wedding present by DM’s family. We um-ed and ah-ed about where to go. Should we go to Paris? Should we go to Amsterdam? Should we go to Rome? The trouble with all of these places is that they require Herculean effort to get there from our home – we’d have to travel for the best part of a day in each direction before even getting onto a plane or train to take us to one of these destinations.

So, we both, independently of one another, looked for something we’d like to do and both, independently of one another, came up with the same destination. Edinburgh. Neither of us had been there before other than for fleeting visits, DM on business and me to see a gig so it would be a new city for both of us.

The beauty of this destination is that we could catch a train, less than ten miles from home, and not need to do anything else except eat, sleep, read, chat, watch the world go by, until we climbed off the train in Edinburgh. It’s the longest single train journey in the UK, although to do it properly we’d have needed to go to Penzance to board the train and get off it in Glasgow but without being that pedantic, we did travel 500 miles by train without needing to change trains at any point. I reckon that’s some feat.

We took a picnic, including a bottle of champers and so arrived in the city without even having to face any British Rail food (don’t tell me it’s Cross Country food not BR – my experience is there is a minimal difference between the crap served on one train company compared to another).

Just the journey was a fab experience. We saw Brunel’s masterpiece the Tamar Bridge, other feats of his genius in the line between Newton Abbot and Exeter, the Somerset Levels, Chesterfield’s crooked spire, York Minster, Durham Cathedral, The Angel of the North, The Tyne Bridge, Lindisfarne and Edinburgh castle all from the comfort of our seats. I reckon that’s a pretty good potted history of England for a day.

Our hotel turned out to be in a fantastically central position (we did know on the map where it was but didn’t really take in what that meant before we went).

I’d researched veggie restaurants before leaving home so managed to navigate us to a vegetarian Indian restaurant just outside the city where we had a wonderful meal and experienced Edinburgh’s bus system before winding up on Princes Street to take this shot. It’s the Balmoral hotel, where the clock is always fast because it’s just outside Edinburgh’s main station and it’s designed to hurry people along so they don’t miss their train.

What a day.