London is known for the fact that there's no
single station called 'London' - in fact, there are some eleven
railway termini whereby London is connected with places throughout
the country, even with other countries (Eurostar)! Among them is
the widely acknowledged King's Cross (Kings X) station that is
responsible for the East Coast Main Line to the cities of York,
Newcastle, and as far as Edinburgh, Inverness, and Aberdeen.
Although I was tied up with my dissertation in summer, I found a
great offer by the train company, Virgin Trains East Coast,
between London Kings X and Edinburgh. I took this opportunity to
try to go farther north where rails aren't connected - to the
farthest northern isles called the Shetland Islands.
The Shetland Islands are located near the border between Britain
and Norway. Therefore, they are quite different from mainland
Britain in several respects. Moreover, my classmate at UCL worked
on a distinctive accent used in the Shetland Islands and often
talked about it to me with passion - that's a strong motivation
for me to make this extreme journey beyond the railway milestones.
In fact, there was a longer journey time than the time I had in
the Shetlands. It took me about 14 hours one way, consisting of
trains to Aberdeen and the night ferry to Lerwick, whereas I only
had 9 hours for sightseeing. I spent most of the three-day trip on
some kinds of transportation.
There were several things that I wanted to experience, and
actually I did. To begin with, as a train nutter (along with this
website's host), I'd been hugely interested in taking a ride on
the 10.00 Aberdeen - the Northern Light service, previously known
as the Flying Scotsman. I got the first class tickets for return
(wow!), where passengers can receive meal and drink service
included in the fare, despite a disappointment on the outbound
journey - they ran short of the hot cooked English Breakfast which
I was looking forward to the most!
Find out what I saw when I arrived