hazelchaz | ...Slowly I start walkin' through the door. The cab arrives, he blows his horn...

Thursday, from Inverness to Plockton. Part 3 of 4 parts. (See Part 1 to start at the beginning of this report.)

We had been going back and forth about what to do on Thursday. We had pencilled in a bus trip to one or more distilleries, a train trip to Kyle of Lochalsh, possibly with a bus ride over the bridge to Skye in there too. But with me pooping out on Wednesday, we were out a day. We finally decided to skip the bus trip to the local distilleries (many of my friends fancy single malts, but not myself), and take the train to the end of the line at Kyle of Lochalsh, which is supposed to be one of the most beautifully scenic railway rides you can find. We went to the Inverness train station to sort out reservations, if applicable, and to also square away our reservations for the trip to

frostfox's house. We learned that we'd need about 6 hours to get down to Cheshire, and we'd want to leave early. We didn't need reservations for the run out to Kyle, though.

We had arrived at Inverness Station early enough that we had 45 minutes to kill before our train. We wandered around downtown. I saw an interesting bus shelter: it had glass or plexiglas sides, it was enclosed on all four sides with an opening on each end. It looked liked it would be perfect to keep a queue of people dry in a rainstorm, and serve to regulate the line as well.

There was a place called the Pancake Place, which if we'd had more time in Inverness we would have investigated further. It wasn't open for dinner, though. A shame; the dessert pancakes looked appealing.

We were looking around for a place to get a baked snack -- preferably a pastry -- before our train. After criss-crossing downtown in a search pattern to try to find a place we'd seen the night before, we ended up at The Lemon tree. A littlle place that serves some baked goods and some meal-like stuff; we got the Empire Biscuit and shortbread. An empire biscuit consists of two sugar cookies, jame between them, white icing on top, and a candied cherry on top of that. It was okay; the prices were astonishing. We wandered back down High Street and found Bakers Oven, which is more like what I was looking for. I bought a sausage roll, a pasty, and a pastry for

library_lynn. I slipped on the step coming out of the shop, though, and in trying to catch myself my hand landed on the pasty. Smushing it didn't improve the flavor, in fact it had too much onion for my taste. I'd only paid 60p for it, so I chucked it away half-eaten and ate my sausage roll. A real, pasty-encased sausage, I might add.

On the way back to the train station, I noticed that the square outside the mall had a statue of a unicorn on a plinth. I don't know if a unicorn is the symbol of Inverness, or what; it wasn't what I expected to find, I'd seen so many heroic statues of war heros and the like up until now.

The train service to Kyle goes in a two-carriage self-motorized train. Reversible, like so many of the British trains are. It's not electric, it's an actual diesel engine. This sort of thing makes a northamerican passenger railfan salivate, as they're in short supply over in USA/Canada. You generally only find them on the minor routes that get so few passengers that two cars is plenty (they're really like buses on rails), and are sufficiently isolated that there hasn't been a strong enough call to electrify the line. In USA and most of Canada, these lines have had their rail passenger service discontinued; here, they're still running. (The Manchester-Chester line works this way too.)

We had enough time that we could go to Kyle, take a bus trip to Skye, and come back. But Kieron had told us about a place on the route, which enjoyed a peculiar climate -- palm trees actually grow there. And the name of the place is Plockton. Well. Seeing as we're friends with most of the Plokta cabal, we had to go to Plockton and mail them poctsarcds. Looking at the timetable, instead of three hours between the train arriving Kyle and the last track back leaving Kyle, we could hop off at Plockton, take the next train to Kyle an hour and a half later, then just spend another hour and a half in Kyle and come back.

So we had a mission. A silly one: Get off at Plockton, find a postcard (preferably with the name of the town, and possibly a palm tree), find a post office, mail them off. We only had two Plokta addresses with us, as my copy of Plokta was back in our luggage in our room. We had Sue's address in Northwich, Cheshire, and we had another address on Craithie in Chester. (I'd forgotten that Alison and Steven had moved five years previously.)

The trainride out to Plockton is absolutely beautiful. Lots of lochs, lots of wild highland scenic loveliness. On the way, someone from the Friends of the Kyle Line (or something like that) came along soliciting donations to promote the line and help their cause in keeping it open. This was the first thing approximating a railway museum that we'd heard of, so we made our donation and got a beautiful map of the Kyle line.

We got off at Plockton and the first thing we noticed was the fuchsia making a phone call. Well, it was in a phone booth, anyway. It might have been waiting for a call back.

We asked in the restaurant ("Off the Rails") at the Plockton station how to find a post office, and the lady told us to go down the road into the village. Right. So we started hiking. At the Plockton High School, we spotted a sign pointing the way to the Plockton Aerodrome -- but the "Plockton" part was partially whited-out. Oh, looks like a cover-up to me! My guess is that the Plockton Aerodrome is where the first of

drplokta's Orbital Mind-Control Lasers were launched, and to prevent anyone from figuring it out they've tried to take the Plockton out of the name of the Aerodrome. It's not working, though, as the whitewash is coming off and the "Plockton" is showing through.