Here I come with another U.K. travelogue. This one has two overriding features that make it different from some of my past ones. Firstly, on this trip, I left behind a sweetheart. A prevailing image that puts a lump in my throat even now when I think of this trip is that of watching Andrew’s retreating figure when he left me at TSA, his tall, gangly (I love gangly) body ambling down the concourse, around a corner and out of sight. Even though he was at home in Seattle, Andrew was part of my travels.

The other feature was that I got sick in the second week of my travels. Not Covid sick but a bad cold with body aches, sore throat and difficulty breathing. I have often wondered how I would manage being sick while I was on my own and traveling; the idea scared me. But I was with my English cousins through the worst of this cold and that helped—more on that later.

I arrived in London after the usual horrible nine-hour plane ride, took the Elizabeth line to Paddington and checked into the Paddington station hotel, a hotel I know well, where I lay in bed for 10 hours –don’t know if I slept—before getting on a train from King’s Cross to Glasgow. Last time I went to Glasgow on the train, I rushed from the airport after the usual horrible nine-hour plane ride and went directly to a four-and-a-half hour train trip. I decided I was too old to do that again.

But before this train, I got my Prets Posh Porridge from Pret a Manger in Paddington station. I love that stuff and it sets me up for the day like nothing else except maybe tea. At the hotel reception, an Easter display of chicks, bunnies and chocolate eggs reminded me that it was Good Friday. I checked out and got a taxi for King’s Cross where I did a thorough sweep of the First-Class lounge and sampled tea, coffee, fruit juice (watery) and got a banana and packets of biscuits for cousins Wendy and Sue who were stuck in the country having had their train to London cancelled. They were frantically trying to find another, enlisting a neighbor to drive them halfway to hell and gone to catch it.

The trains in England are a mess right now. Recurring train strikes mean that when you book a seat, you have to make sure that particular train line isn’t going to be on strike on that particular day. They publish a schedule of the strikes so at least it’s not an unexpected surprise. This has been going on for years. I got caught in a strike when I was there a year ago for Christmas and had to book two unplanned days in London before I could get down to my cousins in the country.

Last time I went to Glasgow on the train, it went straight up the west side of the country and I arrived in less four hours, no transfers. This train went all the way across the country, up the east coast and took over 5 hours and I had to change in Edinburgh. It’s the same train I took in 2005 when I went from Rye (on the English Channel) to Richmond (North Yorkshire). Back in those days I didn’t bother making reservations. I didn’t even know what train station I needed. I asked at Charing Cross information.

“Right. You need King’s Cross to Darlington.”

Darlington. I had never heard of Darlington. It’s not like it was Edinburgh or Newcastle or Oxford. I stopped myself just in time from saying, “Are you sure?”

So here I was on the train to Edinburgh, calling at Darlington, York, Newcastle and a much more seasoned traveller in the U.K. than I had been in 2005. When we were coming into Newcastle, I recognized all the bridges from movies, and of, course, the Vera television series.

“Wow, there they are!” I thought. This happens to me a lot, recognizing places from my reading or television or films.

Was it my imagination or were the people boarding at Newcastle more rugged and noisier? A new staff came on and they were no-nonsense. Here came a man, shaking a bin bag “Roobish? Roobish?”

I slept a little on the train. Every time I opened my eyes, I saw sheep and lambs like cotton balls in the green grass, the tiny lambs curled up together like kittens. White and Hallmark-ready from a distance, up close they are filthy.

The parade of snack and drinks carts began half an hour out of London and continued at intervals. “Can I get anyone anything at all? Any snacks or drinks at all? Does anyone need anything at all?”

I got some High Commissioner whisky, blended in Glasgow. And a cup of tea. I always get a cup of tea, even if I don’t want one. Because underneath it all, one always wants another cup of tea. Off the brunch menu, I got “Frittata with Posh Baked Beans.”

In Glasgow, I fell asleep in my hotel room after texting Wendy and Sue that I’d see them in the morning. In the morning, there they were, their familiar faces so comforting and welcoming. I immediately relinquished all sense of responsibility for anything. They always have everything in hand. (They hate having their pictures taken, let alone being published on the Internet; otherwise you’d see them here.)

In the hotel reception was a “Taxi Call” button. I pressed it. Another button came up saying “Ready to call.” Sue and I stood looking at it. Was it meant to be a confirmation that we weren’t children playing in the hotel whilst our harried parents tried to check in? What did it mean? Sue pressed it.

A taxi zoomed up to the front door. By the time we rolled our luggage out, a second taxi had pulled up and the two drivers got into a pissing contest over whose fare we were.

“We accidentally pushed the call button twice,” I explained.

“Whyja do that?” Taxi Number Two demanded.

Um. Accident?

As Taxi Number One pulled away with us inside, the driver said, “Sure it was a small accident. No need for ‘im to have attitude.”

At Queen Street station we sat in a waiting room with sandwiches we had found at the station’s Marks and Spencer. A giant, long-coated Alsatian named Thor and a crabby but talented pianist outside the waiting room entertained us. (The train stations all have pianos with wonderful amateur pianists. I noticed that a new reality TV show called “The Piano” is about to drop and will ruin this wonderful feature of the train stations. Soon regular people will feel intimidated and incompetent.)

We boarded a four-car, crowded commuter train for the four-hour ride to Oban, a favorite resort town since Victorian times on the edge of mainland Scotland. It’s a launch point to several of the islands of the inner Hebrides, one of which, Mull, was our destination. We had half an hour to get from the Oban train station to the boat that would take us to Mull, a window that shrunk to five minutes because the train ran late. It reminded me of the nail-biter when I took the bus from Glasgow to Kennacraig with minutes to get on the boat to Islay. At least Oban was a town with hotels. Kennacraig is just a boat dock in the middle of nowhere.

Our train steward called ahead to see if they could hold the boat. (I bet he said “at all.” As in “Can you hold the boat any extra time at all?”) The Caledonian MacBrayne “Coir’ Uisg” (pronounce: “coroosk”) was revving its engine when we came panting aboard. The boat was moving before we had stowed our luggage on the car deck.

After a quiet, beautiful ride, we alighted on Mull with the expectation that a rental car would be waiting for us in the tiny coastal town of Craignuir. It was late afternoon and cold. There was no rental car to be seen. Now what?

Leaving Oban

en route to Mull

arrival Craignuir