After leaving Loch Lomond, we drove back to Edinburgh, returned our rental car, fought with the rental car company about an issue with the tire that we are sure was there when we picked it up (did I already mention that insurance is a very good thing?), and headed to Edinburgh Waverley train station to take the night train to London.
We were feeling rather glib about somehow escaping the UK’s hottest day ever by being in the Scottish Highlands and were really looking forward to spending the night on the train and waking up in London. Our luck started to change around 7:30pm when we received an email from the Caledonian Sleeper that, due to a malfunction, there would likely be no water supply in our cabin which meant no working sink, shower, or toilet. Not ideal but we were happy the train was still running given the stories we read that day of tracks buckling due to the heat.
With 3 hours left until we could board, we headed to grab dinner because the lounge we were promised access to wasn’t open due to staff shortages. At 10:30pm, we’re sitting on the platform, outside the train which had arrived from Inverness, wondering why they wouldn’t let us board. At 11pm they finally open the train doors. We moved to our cabins — Josh and Alexander in one cabin and Xavier and I in another. We were pleasantly surprised to find the water did work so the boys proceeded to take a quick shower and get in bed. Xavier had the camera at the ready, hoping to capture video of the departure from the station. We waited and waited and waited for the train to start moving. The departure time of 11:40pm came and went. We’re laying in our bunks, dozing in and out of consciousness when an announcement begins. As soon as it started, I knew it wasn’t good. Minutes before, I read in one of the sleeper train brochures that they never make delay announcements for fear of waking people up. But this announcement was too big to miss. They were sorry to tell us that the train wouldn’t be going anywhere that night. The heat caused issues along the tracks and, although they were told all day that the night train would be able to operate, they were just being advised that we could not proceed to London. They said we would receive a full refund and were welcome to sleep on the train until the morning.
There was dead silence in our cabin until Xavier and I burst out laughing. We weren’t feeling so glib anymore. We were now feeling the effects of the heatwave and we were stuck, hundreds of miles away from where we needed to be. It’s past midnight, we’ve just been told we’re going nowhere and that they’re not sure if any trains will run the next day. Good luck going to sleep after getting that information. I laid there with my mind racing with questions about how in the world we were going to figure this out. The next morning we read an article in the Guardian that we could have written.
A little foreshadowing … we were still thinking about our cancelled sleeper train several days later (Day 18) when we were in London, walking along the Southbank and we came upon a couple of poets offering “Pay What You Like Poetry” on any topic that we wanted. Obviously, we chose our recent experience on the sleeper train and we received these excellent poems that beautifully sum-up our experience.
Now read about the day from 12 year-old eyes:
We went to Loch Lomond and swam in the rather sandy water (which had a lot of sticks) and I feel like we should have stayed longer on the island, Inchcailloch. We had a lot of fun on the drive to Edinburgh — singing Loch Lomond at the top of our lungs — but when we got to the car rental place, they said there was a slash on the tire and they charged us for it even though we probably didn’t do it. Josh spent a while talking to the agency trying to get us out of paying for it or at least get the right insurance papers in order, I think.
After that, we got on the tram to Princes Street and walked to Edinburgh Waverley station. We went to the waiting area and bought The 143-Storey Treehouse book (the UK version says Storey!) which we had NO idea existed. While Josh was out looking for restaurants, we got the news that there would be no water in one of our rooms on the train. We ate dinner at Brewhemia across from the station, where I got a sausage with ketchup AND mustard (I’m branching out in Europe) and watercress and fried onion on top and a salad on the side. It was VERY good.
We thought we were gonna cut it a bit close when we left, but we ended up getting to the station at about 10:40 and we went on the platform. It took a while for them to open the doors but when we finally got on, we got the news that our entire car didn’t have water. After we received this news, we were pretty ticked off. I then proceeded to enter our cabin on the train, and I was pretty impressed. It had a VERY strange-looking toilet/shower (it’s so weird, I can’t even explain it, but we’ve dubbed it the showlet!) and it had a bunk bed that looked pretty comfortable. I went to the public bathroom on the train (because ours supposedly didn’t work!) and when I came back, I found out that Alexander had discovered that there was WATER! I had gone to the disgusting public bathroom instead of using our own private one!
I brushed my teeth, and then Alexander took a shower that he said was the WORST shower he had ever taken in his life, and that it was cold, and the water flow was inconsistent, but when I took the showlet, I didn’t actually think it was that bad. I got in bed and I wanted to take video of the train leaving the station from the window. My mom was below me on the bottom bunk, and we were at the ready. We we just getting comfortable in our beds when there was an announcement. I didn’t catch the beginning of it because we were playing George Winston to calm us, but I got the gist of it. The Caledonian Sleeper train was not going to go anywhere.
After the announcement me and my mom just laughed. We had gone through all this trouble to get the train and all that, and we would still be 400 miles away from where we needed to be in the morning. My mom went to go talk to my dad about the whole situation, and I just settled in bed thinking about what would happen tomorrow. A little hint for the next day: It did NOT go the way I thought it would go.
the-summer-of-22.com 