Inverness; Monday, 05 May, 2014

As I didn’t have anything planned for the morning, and my train wasn’t until just before 1, I was looking forward to a nice long lie in. Unfortunately, the fire alarm system at the hotel was having different ideas and at around 06:45 the entire hotel was evacuated into a chilly Northern Highlands early morning.

30 minutes later we were let back into the hotel and after leaving it about 45 minutes for the worst of the queue for breakfast to die down (given everyone was now up, they were clearly all going to go to breakfast at the same time), I headed down for breakfast.

Having checked out I wandered over into the centre of town to pick up the City Sightseeing tour bus to take the tour of the city.

I did one complete circuit and part of a second circuit to get back close to the hotel so that I could pick up my bag and head back over to the station.

I was very early for the train, but this proved to be a good idea as they allowed boarding to start more than 30 minutes before departure and I was able to get a comfortable seat with a big window and plenty of space, which given by the time the train left there were lots of people standing, was a godsend.

Three and a half hours later we pulled into Edinburgh Waverley station and I walked the short distance over to the airlink bus stop and picked up the bus back to the airport and my flight home.