From Glasgow to Dundee by road
The series M77, M74, M73, M80, A9, M90, A90 may not sound loaded with emotional weight, but for me those roads are associated with the sadness of separation and the joy of reunion. It’s the route I drive between our home in Glasgow and Dundee, where our eldest boy now lives, after leaving for university.
When he moved, that’s the way we went. If we visit him or pick him up, this is how we go. Those highways are full of memories. The gantries warn you not to drive if you are tired. They say nothing about melancholy or sweet nostalgia.
The first thing we look for is deer. The M77 cuts through Pollok Park and there are often roe deer and verges cut off. You first see the white rump; if traffic is slow there is time to notice the small antlers. The deer feel like a blessing on the journey.
The café’s circular dining room looks unchanged since the 1960s and its cult appeal is further enhanced by the fiberglass cow on the roof
We pass Stirling and admire the dramatic castle on its large rock. We pass Dunblane, where in 2012 we saw Andy Murray walking with the children as he celebrated his victories at the US Open and the Olympic Games. He signed their tennis balls. Those signatures are now faded, but they are still there, and so is Andy – and we will never forget that day.
The land changes as you travel east, offering the pleasant geometry of agriculture: cylinders, parallel lines, arches, hay bales, plowed fields, polytunnels. Along the A9, near Perth, I notice a particular field with a particular tree. It must be quite a task for the farmer to work around it, and yet it has never been cut down. There is undoubtedly some superstition attached to it; bad luck for the one who wields the axe. It gives me the shivers.
A good place to banish the chills is the Horn Milk Bar, a roadside café along the A90. The circular dining room looks unchanged since the 1960s and its cult appeal is further enhanced by the fiberglass cow on the roof. As the Queen’s funeral procession passed the Horn on its way from Balmoral, the cow was draped in a union flag.
Finally the end of the road: our son’s apartment. The light in Dundee is like Billy Mackenzie’s voice: intense, theatrical, heartbreaking, almost too much. It bounces off the Tay and saturates the city. We pass close to the cemetery where the lead singer of Associates is laid to rest, and then we get out of the car for hugs and hello.
Peter Ross
The Night Riviera sleeper from Penzance to London
“You have two minutes for ‘The’ history of the Great Western Railway in the 19th century’, from now on…’
The man in the famous black chair was my father, so when I step onto the Night Riviera sleeping car (in the green Great Western Railway livery) I think back forty years to Mastermind, my father’s double-decker attic model railway and its enormous railway library.
Train journeys do not start on the platform; they start in the mind. Just as a diner drools before a meal, the night train traveler visualizes before the journey. I never buy my sleeping ticket anonymously online, but always in person at the highly regarded ticket office at Penzance station: “A cabin on the Night Riviera to London, please.” The night train has been running to and from this westernmost train station in England since 1877: it is as old as Black Beauty, Wimbledon and Boots.
Magnus Magnusson: “What was the very last broad gauge passenger train to leave Paddington on May 9, 1892?”
Dad: “To Plymouth at 5 p.m.”
Magnus Magnusson: “Right.”
On board I am met by a steward with a clipboard, I am shown to my neat cabin, after which I have a quiet drink in the lounge car as we drive away from platform one to the view of a moonlit sea, and we take off.
I sleep in harmony with the rocking carriage, the rhythm of the wheel on the rail; a seduction of metallic movement and memory
The night sleeper from Penzance to London lingers all night for eight hours, covering 250 miles. It is the earthly tortoise’s alternative to the flying hare, but what the railway service lacks in speed it supplies in spirit. I cannot enter my cabin on the moving night train without summoning Poirot (Finney, not Branagh).
I sleep in harmony with the rocking carriage, the rhythm of the wheel on the rail, a seduction of metallic movement and memory. I’m going to London on business and we’ll arrive at 6am. I pull the curtain up a few inches and see a bronze bear with a bronze hat, leaning on a bronze luggage. There is no stampede of commuters on platform one; the night travelers leave as soon as they get up.
Fifteen hours later I’m back in Paddington to catch the 10.45pm Cornish Riviera sleeper to Penzance, my second consecutive night on the train. This, however, is the best of all possible journeys, for we are going west; it’s the journey home.
My father scored 14 points for his specialist subject, but was unfortunately defeated by ‘Roman Emperors of the first and second centuries’.
Christopher Morris
The Coastliner from Leeds to Whitby
Golden city walls, flowering forests and heathlands slowly slide past the window. The 75 mile journey between Leeds and Whitby takes 3½ hours on the Coastliner 840 bus. It’s not the quickest way to explore this epic stretch of Yorkshire countryside, but it’s my favourite.
This is a route I have traveled in all seasons: when spring daffodils line the stream under pink and white blossoms, and while the August heaths turn purple under bright blue. In autumn we see the Howardian Hills splashed with ocher and the bronze-coloured highlands stretching towards the sea. And winter brings changeable dramatic skies, sudden sleet outside the windows and early sunsets silhouetted by the ruined Whitby Abbey on the clifftop above the Esk.
The 840 is one of the best bargains created by the £2 cap on bus fares, which is now extended until December 2024
Over the years I’ve hopped off almost everywhere along the route: to eat raspberry gelato in Malton’s Talbot Yard, to admire 15th-century murals at Pickering’s St. Peter and St. Paul’s church, and to stroll through autumnal larches in Dalby Forest to the Fox and Rabbit Inn. But it is the journey that delights me, especially the last hour. In 2018, the route was named Britain’s most scenic bus ride and on-board commentary was introduced.
As I head upstairs to the tables and large windows at the front, I meet other 840 superfans. One person says she takes this bus every other day and never gets tired of the views; another likes to travel from Whitby to Malton every week for “the scenery, a look in the charity shops and a cheeky half at the Spotted Cow”.
The less scenic stretch between Leeds and York serves schoolchildren, shoppers and commuters. The less frequent 840 buses beyond Malton may have a handful of passengers in winter, but can fill up in summer with day trippers with towels and deflated lilos in hand.
For those of us who love this journey, the long meditative miles of dry stone walls and cow parsley, vast landscapes and big skies are an end in themselves. Each journey reveals something new: a glimpse of a viaduct along the River Wharfe at Tadcaster or the alien pyramid of RAF Fylingdales’ radar system.
The 840 is one of the best bargains created by the £2 bus price cap, which has now been extended until December 2024. Previously a day ticket cost £19. Matt Burley, commercial manager at Transdev, which operates the Coastliner, tells me that the company is proud of Britain’s most beautiful bus route and healthy passenger numbers: “With fares as little as £2, we see many customers traveling with us. ”
On the top deck I unpack my sandwiches and watch the unfolding expanse of the moors.
Phoebe Taplin