Birthday Surprise

It was recently a birthday ending in a zero for me and in the lead up to the event my wife had been teasing me somewhat. “I don’t like surprises” ¹, became a bit of a challenge to her. She not only organised a surprise but regularly mentioned that it was on the horizon. So as the date approached I was getting a little anxious, dreading some kind of surprise party or something. All I knew at this point was that she’d asked me to book a few days off work.

It turned out I needn’t have worried - we had a lovely weekend away just the two of us. Each morning of the extended weekend she’d introduce what we were doing to me by giving me an envelope.

Day 1

We left the house and jumped on a tram to Sheffield train station. In the envelope was:

• Rail tickets to London
• A booking for baggage storage
• Tickets to the British Museum
• Rail tickets for the Caledonian Sleeper to Inverness

So off we went to London on the train. We walked to our bag drop off near Euston and then spent a pleasant few hours bobbing round the British Museum. There’s some interesting stuff there, although the collections feel a bit unorganised in places. I do think they ought to up their game on explaining the controversy about some of the collections and how they were collected though.

We ate at Pizza Pilgrims round the corner from the station, collected our bags and wandered around Euston looking for the lounge for the Caledonian Sleeper. The signage to it seems to point in conflicting directions. We eventually found it and settled down for a little while until boarding started.

I was quite excited as we dropped our bags off in our tiny wee cabin, spun on our heels and went to the bar/restaurant car so that we could watch our departure from London with a drink. We only had the one drink because it was already dark, so quite quickly there wasn’t much to see and we wanted to make sure we weren’t stealing a space from anyone that needed to eat.

Day 2

A tiny bunk on a moving train isn’t completely conducive to a restful nights sleep. We were up before sunrise and made our way to the restaurant car for breakfast - we’d booked it so that we’d be say eating as the sun rose whilst we chugged through the edge of the Cairngorm’s - it was lovely.

Eventually we arrived in Inverness. Due to the early arrival we took advantage of lounge access for an hour or so until we were close to the time we could check into our hotel. An amble through the town centre and down to the river took us to our hotel and we checked in and both flaked out for a nap.

Once refreshed we headed out into Inverness and had a nice wander round the city centre, visiting the Inverness Museum and Art Gallery, the Black Isle Brewery Bar and the Victorian Market. The food hall there was buzzing so that’s where we had our evening meal, whilst listening to a DJ play obscure disco.

Day 3

We were up and out fairly early to the bus station for a short coach journey to catch a boat trip to Loch Ness. Whilst I knew that Loch Ness was big, I didn’t really understand until I was on it. At first we sat outside on the upper deck of the boat before our faces almost froze in the cold wind and we were forced inside. Unfortunately we didn’t spot any monsters on our trip but did disembark at Urquhart Castle. Whilst the castle ruins themselves were interesting, it was the views over Loch Ness that really stole the show.

After an hour or so in the castle our coach driver picked us up to take us back to Inverness by road. She kept up an entertaining line of patter as we wound our way back along winding mountain road - I’m not sure about the veracity of some of what she was saying but the Americans on the trip were lapping it up.

Back in Inverness and with a fair thirst we tried a pint at Uile Bheist. We weren’t as keen on this place and they had no snacks, so we walked back across the river to Black Isle for a pint and a pizza.

Ambling back to the hotel for another small nap, we popped into Leakey’s bookshop - a wondrous cavern of books. I bought Lou a 1980s book about bats as a little thank you for organising all this for me.

In my envelope for Day 3 was a booking for a restaurant, River House, and a gift voucher for it from one of my friends. I can’t recommend it more highly - the staff were lovely and the food was amazing.

Coming home

Lou had broken the journey up with a night in Glasgow - as it was Sunday afternoon it was a bit quiet. We did have a nice walk, some sushi and a pint before retiring to our hotel room. Then in the morning we headed to Edinburgh and changed for our train back to Yorkshire.