The 2016 Challenge, day 0: Getting to Oban (4)

We finished our drinks and made our way to Glasgow Queen Street. The station was being thoroughly rebuilt, and all trains were departing from the low level platforms. We found the right platform, and I took a photo of my charming companion as we waited for our train (the train in the background was not ours ... it was the one before ours, or possibly even the one before that ...

In due course the Oban train pulled in and we climbed aboard. I didn't have a first class ticket this time, mind, so I had to travel substandard class. That is because there is no first class accommodation on the Glasgow - Oban line, so they won't sell you a first class ticket. Unlike their money-grubbing colleagues South of the border. So much for national stereotypes!

We were joined in the carriage by a couple of first time Challengers whose names I don't now remember (probably also noted on the back of a piece of paper which I discarded) and the onward journey soon passed in pleasant conversation and craned necks as we looked in awe (good pun, that, for those who know this part of Scotland!) at the majestic scenery we were travelling through and which, before too much longer, I should be walking through.

(OK, OK ... for those of you who don't know it, the pun is that the railway to Oban runs along the shores of Loch Awe ... )