Eastern Lowlands; Friday, 05 May, 2006

07:17 The train should, by now, be sitting in Edinburgh Waverley station, I should have had breakfast, and I should be about to get out of the train, leave my bags at the left luggage and head off to St Andrews for the day. Unfortunately the train is stuck next to some pretty fields between Stafford and Crewe some 5 hours from Edinburgh having broken down at about 2am! There is no food on the train (that would be taken on at Carlisle at about 5am!) and we now have to wait for engineers to come out and take the broken engine off the front of the train, release the breaks, stick another engine on the back, reverse us into Stafford, change onto a normal train and go on up to Edinburgh. Estimated arrival time now midday - nearly 5 hours late. Still at least they have coffee!

08:00 and things take a turn for the worse! The engine has run out of juice so there is no more hot water for tea or coffee! Still no sign of this replacement engine.

09:40 we have been loaded onto coaches for a 4-5 hour road journey to Edinburgh, still no food or drink!

11:30 a 45 minute stop at services at Charnock Richard between Liverpool and Blackpool means I can finally buy some breakfast and have a comfort stop, but it now means arrival into Edinburgh is not expected before 3:30, 8 hours later than originally planned.

12:30 M6, Lake District, at least the journey is through some of the prettiest scenery in England.

13:25 More than 10 hours after we should have done so on the train, we finally cross the English/Scottish border at Gretna Green.

16:25 Almost 9 hours to the minute after we were supposed to arrive, the coach pulled to a halt on the side of the road on the Waverley bridge. Having spoken to the ScotRail duty manager and getting lots of abject apologies I headed over to my hotel to check in.

I had a big plan of things I was going to do, unfortunately a large proportion of this worked on the basis of the sleeper actually reaching Edinburgh, so with glorious weather still in control I headed off to the edge of the city to climb to the top if Arthur's seat, the highest point in the city.

The views from the top on a beautiful clear spring day are spectacular. Stretching from the Forth Bridge across the Firth of Forth to the Southern Highlands. After spending almost half an hour taking in the views I walked back down (taking longer than the climb up!) to the city centre for dinner.