To the Top of the World

1. The journey begins.

No, not the well known Carpenters song, but instead a trip to 80 degrees north on the HX expedition ship, MS Spitsbergen.

Our adventure starts today departing Jersey on the red eye to London Heathrow. A good start, the taxi arrived on time, the flight departed on time and we’re heading north already. 

We then allowed ourselves a good three hours to get from Heathrow to Kings Cross station where we managed to avoid the wannabe wizards alighting platform 9 3/4 on their half term break and found our seats on the far less magical platform 6 express service departing for Edinburgh. 

There is something to be said for train journeys….we’ve done several over the last few years around Europe and thoroughly enjoyed them…much less stressful and hectic than airports…just sit back and watch the countryside go by. And that’s what we did today and took in some notable sights….the historical Kilburn white horse, Durham and Newcastle cathedrals and crossed the grade 1 listed viaduct in Berwick upon Tweed, to name a few.

The train journey took just over 4 hours and was just 6 minutes late into Edinburgh. The Man in Seat 36 himself thought that was pretty good for a LNER service but had it been Japan Railways no doubt it would have resulted in a public enquiry together with several notable resignations.

Having suffered record breaking heat back home over the last few days it was a relief to find Edinburgh a much more comfortable 18C, lovely and sunny, not a cloud in the sky and not raining. It always rains in Scotland, so further evidence of climate change if ever I saw it.

We checked into our hotel and just had a potter down George Street, finding a delightful restaurant named Contini for our evening meal and then walked back up Princes street taking in the evening sunshine and the main city centre tourist sights, ie the Castle, the Balmoral Hotel and the Sir Walter Scott memorial.

After a very early morning start, an early night beckoned.