Heading North

For me there is always a sense of trepidation just before I begin a big journey: butterflies in the stomach, a knot of uncertainty wrapping itself around my plans, and me wondering what might go wrong. I can only assume it is because I am in some middle ground between the organising and the doing, that point when my trip is almost upon me but when I still have time and space in my head with nothing else to fill it. Certainly once I start a trip - once ‘rubber hits road’ - the trip itself becomes my preoccupation and while problems do occur I am much more in the moment and deal with them as they arise. 

Maybe this time those worries were meant as some forewarning of how today would turn out: it has been a fraught journey. An overcrowded and late train from Bristol meant I missed my connection to a fast Edinburgh train at Birmingham. But as my Bristol train was also Edinburgh bound, just arriving later but not so late that I would miss my onward connection to Inverness, I need not worry. Or so I thought. That late train got later and, despite a valiant struggle with bike and baggage through the crowds of Edinburgh Waverley, I missed the train to Inverness by two minutes. I was re ticketed onto a slow route via Perth and up through Scottish Highland blackness, with old and tiny but familiar sounding stations - Pitlochry, Dalwhinnie, Aviemore - the only puddles of light on an otherwise dark journey. It was not until 11pm - over twelve hours after leaving Bristol - that I collapsed into my tiny, single room in some Inverness back street, tired from my trip and with thoughts of rest and sleep trumping thoughts of dinner.