‘Green Tourism’ is a rather hackneyed phrase these days, but the bottom line is that large number of tourists almost always end up destroying the things they’ve come to gawp at. Fortunately, there are a few enjoyable, relaxing holidays that won’t perforate the ozone layer (or your wallet), and we think this is a superb example.

Scotland is a great holiday destination, but if you drive there, you’re committed to long tedious hours on the M6, with all the pollution and unpleasantness that entails, or fly north, and either wrestle with airport buses or hire a car to reach your destination. Neither option is particularly enjoyable, but there is another way – Scotrail’s Caledonian Sleeper.To avoid awkward transfers, we took the train theme even further, hiring a holiday coach at Rogart station on the Far North railway line, reached by a simple cross-platform connection from the sleeper at Inverness station.

The golden era of the holiday carriage was more or less over by the 1950s, making the privately-owned examples at Rogart amongst the last in the country, but if you think sleeper trains are a thing of the past, think again.The only real casualty in recent years has been the West of England-Scotland service (which would have suited us very well), leaving trains from London to Scotland only. Some of the more tenuous Highland services were threatened by railway privatisation in the early ‘90s, but all survived, and Scotrail runs trains from London Euston every night (except Saturdays), to Glasgow & Edinburgh (the Lowlander), and Fort William, Aberdeen, and our destination, Inverness (the Highlander). The company provides 800 berths, plus around 240 seats, six nights a week, removing some 500 cars and 250,000 car miles from the over-stressed motorway network nightly. That’s more than 77 million car-miles each year.

…800 berths, six nights a week… That’s more than 77 million car-miles each year…

The Lowlander leaves London at close to midnight, splitting and arriving in both Glasgow and Edinburgh just after 7am, while the Highland portions leave London at 9.05pm as one massive 16-coach train (currently the longest scheduled passenger service on Britain’s railways) before splitting at Edinburgh into more manageable chunks. Despite a leisurely schedule, arrival times are 7.35 in Aberdeen, 8.30 in Inverness, and 9.43am in Fort William. Coming the other way, all trains are scheduled to arrive in London between 7.30 and 8am, making the sleeper something of a favourite with businessmen facing an early meeting in the capital.

If you’re unfamiliar with sleeping on the move, the motion (including occasional jolts from the locomotive) can be unsettling at first, but we dropped off relatively quickly and slept quite well. Air- conditioning in the berths is very responsive, and the subtle lighting and efficient sound-proofing would help to get most people in the mood for a kip.

Bicycles

The Caledonian Sleepers include a reasonable-sized luggage area for skis, bags and/or up to six bicycles.We would have been pretty nervous about taking full-size bikes on a multi-train journey of this kind anyway, but the Inverness portion of the Sleeper carries containers of fresh shellfish to select London restaurants (yes, honestly) and thus offers space for only three bicycles. In any event, the Class 158 trains from Inverness northwards only carry two bikes on a good day, so we’d strongly recommend leaving the cumbersome at home.

…In the south, Rogart would be considered a hamlet, but it’s quite a regional centre…

In practice, a couple of Bromptons (plus a child seat) fitted easily onto the spare bed in our 4-bed family berth. For two travelling together in a single berth, one compact folding machine will fit on the floor and another on the shelf, although this can make late-night tooth-brushing a bit of a Houdini job. Although the cabin attendants hardly raised on eyebrow at the bikes (and we’d guess a fully dismembered Bike Friday or Airnimal would be no problem in a travel case), anything larger would have to take it’s chances in the luggage area.

Actually, a bicycle is very much an option for this holiday, because the pair of 8-berth holiday coaches at Rogart are situated in the station yard, less than 100 metres from the platform. Accommodation is fairly basic, but with weekly rates of £195 to £225 for eight (cheaper mid-week deals are available off- season), extremely good value.The coaches have retained their full-length corridor, with original toilet and additional shower at each end. Four of the former 1st-class compartments have been converted into two-berth sleepers, one into a sitting room, another into a dining room, and the last making a practical kitchen. For serious rail enthusiasts, a fully functioning Class 127 DMU will be converted later in the year.The coaches also provide hostel accommodation at a reasonable £10 per night (under 12s £7.50), with a further 10% discount for cyclists and/or rail users.

The Highlands

In the south of England, Rogart would be considered a hamlet, but in Highland terms, it’s quite a regional centre, with a good pub/restaurant and the sort of general store that stocks everything from bootlaces to smoked salmon. For walkers, the moors and peaks are just off the station platform, and we spent many happy hours dodging sleet showers to peer down at our tiny carriage from wind-blasted peaks with unpronounceable names. For cyclists, all roads except the A9 are quiet, back roads virtually car-free, and the local drivers courteous without exception.The easiest ride of all is to take the train ten miles up the valley to Lairg and cruise back: down hill all the way, with a prevailing tailwind.

For more serious on or off-road types, the Far North offers great opportunities for adventure. Our favourite was 60 miles up the line to Altnabreac, surely one of the loneliest railway stations in Britain, with no electricity, and some miles from the nearest tarmacadam road, followed by a swift ride north on well surfaced trails to the slightly less remote Scotscalder station, for the train home. As if this trip weren’t surreal enough, Scotscalder has been restored to the way it might have looked in around 1930, although rather disappointingly, the stationmaster has been replaced by a track ganger from Jarvis with a Ford Escort and a mobile phone.

Altnabreac’s lonely shelter has a phone, which is fortunate, because if you normally commute on the 5.11pm, you’ll be facing a 14 hour wait for the next train if you happen to miss it.The Far North line has only three trains a day, so trips must be planned around the scanty timetable. Fortunately, the timings from Rogart are perfect for leisure journeys – outward on the 8.36 (south) or 9.07 (north), and back for lunch or supper.

There are buses along the coast too, and unusually the bus south can be faster than the train.When the Dornoch Firth was bridged in the 1980s, the A9 road took the short-cut, but funding was refused for a combined rail/road bridge, leaving the railway wiggling and squiggling inland for twenty miles, while the road coaches head due north.This very British scandal has caused mutterings in Highland transport circles ever since, but a rail bridge looks unlikely in the current climate. It’s the usual story: the Department for Transport refused to allow investment in track and rolling stock to give the line a long-term future, but – quite frankly – hasn’t got the guts to close it either.These days, of course, they’ll tell you that improvements are ‘a commercial decision for the operator’.That’s funny, we thought the taxpayer was funding the railways – we must have misunderstood. Nevertheless, Far North rail services are well-patronised, particularly in the summer, and since 2002 Scotrail has taken the unusual step of providing a road van to carry overflow bicycles at peak times.

Against all the odds, the line also has a new (and very successful) commuter service into Inverness and occasional freight trains, including timber and a daily train for Safeway supermarkets. If you want to know more about such things (and anything relating to trains, tractors or bicycles in the Highlands) you’ll need to talk to our hosts at Rogart, Katy and Frank Roach.When he’s not helping with the sleeper carriage business, Frank Roach is Rail Development Manager for the Highland Rail Partnership.

How does the sleeper compare?

Cheap flights abound to Edinburgh and Glasgow – albeit at slightly odd hours – but flying is more problematic than you might think, and Inverness can be expensive.To start with, most departures are from Heathrow or Gatwick, necessitating quite a trek out of London, and many flights stop-over in Glasgow, giving a four-hour plus journey time.

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We found return Inverness air tickets from £170 to £500 per person (yes, four-year- old Alexander would pay too), but we couldn’t find an arrival time before 12.30, to which you must add a couple more hours for hiring a car, and driving the remaining 80 miles to Rogart. All things considered, we would have been lucky to get much change from a grand, including transfers. Driving from London means a journey of 621 miles each way, which the Automobile Association reckon will take you about 12 hours, but you’d need some sort of rest break too, unless you’re completely potty. On the AA’s figures, the cost of the journey would be £500 to £600 in a typical car.

Scotrail offers a bewildering array of fares aboard the Highland Sleeper. Looking only at return packages, fares start at £38 per person (effectively a standby fare, booked via the internet up to 12 noon the day before travel, but you need to be flexible about dates) to £215 for a 1st class return.The ‘normal’ fares are £149 return for a 2nd class sleeper berth (solitary travellers may have to share with someone of the same sex), or £90 return for a seat, albeit the comfy reclining kind. That could prove good value if you find sleep impossible on the move. Advance Apex tickets cost £99 in a sleeper berth or £55 seated. Our Family ticket, for up to four people in two inter-linked cabins (at least one occupant must be a child), cost £290 for the return journey – quite a bargain against the alternatives.

Sleeper tips:

 – Try to avoid travelling on a Sunday while the West Coast engineering works continue. Until 21st March, Glasgow and Edinburgh trains will be diverted on Sundays, but the Highland portions will not run. Discussions are underway to keep disruption to a minimum during the busy summer period.

– If taking a folding bike, make sure it’s bagged and well-disguised prior to departure.There’s usually plenty of room in the guard’s van, but choose the right van

– the Highland train starts out with three! – The lounge cars are a popular (if smoky) destination for a nightcap, but regular travellers tend to grab the best seats early on. Send someone straight along to get the pints in.

Conclusion

The advantage of the sleeper is that it sets you down refreshed and ready to start enjoying yourself, then whisks you away at the end of a hard day’s entertainment, depositing you back in the capital in time for (and ready to face) work or leisure. But travelling the length of the United Kingdom at night, the Scotrail sleeper is vulnerable to delays and disruption from engineering works, and when we travelled in October, the West Coast mainline was in total disarray, resulting in an arrival in Inverness over an hour late. Fortunately, there’s a generous ‘connection’ for the Far North trains.

Coming home, the promised eight o’clock arrival in London eventually stretched to eleven-something – awkward if you’ve arranged onward travel. None of this can be blamed on Scotrail, of course, but you’ll know our view by now:The problems will only really be over when the rail industry is stitched back together. Delays aside, the sleeper is enormous fun, especially for four-year-olds, but then isn’t everything?

Sleeper info & Reservations: Scotrail web www.scotrail.co.uk mail enquiries@scotrail.co.uk The Rogart Railway Carriage Co: Kate Roach tel/fax 01408 641343
mail kate@sleeperzzz.com web www.sleeperzzz.com

Recommended night reading: Iron Roads to the Far North & Kyle. A fully illustrated guide book to the Far North line, full of railway and background historical information. Good value for £4.99. Michael Pearson . ISBN 0 907864 98 8
Publisher Wayzgoose web www.wayzgoose.org.uk tel 01283 713674