From Glasgow to Dundee by road
The sequence M77, M74, M73, M80, A9, M90, A90 may not sound freighted with emotional weight, but those roads are, for me, associated with the sadness of separation and the pleasure of reunion. It’s the route I drive between our home in Glasgow and Dundee, where our eldest boy now lives, having left for university.
When he moved out, that’s the way we went. When we visit or go to pick him up, that’s how we go. Those motorways are slick with memories. The gantries warn you not to drive while 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 bucks and does cropping the verges. You see the white rump first; if traffic is slow, there’s time to notice small antlers. The deer feel like a blessing on the journey.
We pass Stirling, admiring the dramatic castle on its great rock. We pass Dunblane where, in 2012, we took the kids to see Andy Murray on walkabout, celebrating his wins at the US Open and Olympics. He signed their tennis balls. Those signatures are faded now, but still there, and so is Andy – and we’ll never forget that day.
The land changes as you travel east, offering agriculture’s pleasing geometry: cylinders, parallel lines, arcs, hay bales, ploughed fields, polytunnels. Along the A9, near Perth, I keep an eye out for a particular field with a particular tree. It must be a chore for the farmer to work around, and yet it has never been cut down. Some superstition no doubt attaches to it; bad luck to he who wields the axe. It gives me the shivers.
A good place to banish the shivers is the Horn Milk Bar, a roadside cafe off the A90. The circular dining room appears unchanged since the 1960s, its cult appeal heightened by the fibreglass cow on the roof. When the Queen’s funeral cortege passed the Horn, on its journey from Balmoral, the cow was draped in a union flag.
Finally, the end of the road: our son’s flat. The light in Dundee is like Billy Mackenzie’s voice – intense, theatrical, heart-lifting, almost too much. It bounces off the Tay and saturates the city. We pass close to the cemetery where the Associates singer lies, then it’s out of the car for hugs and hellos.
Peter Ross
The Night Riviera sleeper from Penzance to London
“You have two minutes on ‘The history of the Great Western Railway in the 19th century’, starting now … ”
The man in the famous black chair was my dad, so as I step on to the Night Riviera sleeper (in its green Great Western Railway livery) my mind spins back 40 years to Mastermind, my dad’s double-decker attic model railway and his vast railway library.
Rail journeys don’t begin on the platform; they begin in the mind. As a diner salivates before a meal, so the night-rail traveller visualises before the journey. My sleeper ticket is never bought anonymously online, but always in person at the greatly valued ticket office at Penzance station: “A cabin on the Night Riviera to London, please.” The night train has run to and from this most westerly railway 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 9 May 1892?”
Dad: “The 5pm to Plymouth.”
Magnus Magnusson: “Correct.”
Met on board by a steward with a clipboard, I’m shown to my neat cabin, then have a quiet drink in the lounge car as we pull away from platform one to views of a moonlit sea, and we are off.
The night sleeper from Penzance to London dawdles for 255 miles over eight hours throughout the night. It is the earthbound tortoise to the flying hare alternative, but what the rail service lacks in speed it delivers in spirit. I cannot enter my cabin on the moving night train without conjuring Poirot (Finney, not Branagh).
I sleep in harmony with the rocking carriage, the rhythm of wheel on rail, a seduction of metal movement and memory. I’m heading to London on business and we arrive at 6am. I raise the blind an inch and spot a bronze bear with a bronze hat leaning on some bronze luggage. There is no commuter stampede on platform one, the night travellers leave as they rise.
Fifteen hours later I’m back in Paddington to take the 10.45pm Cornish Riviera sleeper to Penzance, my second consecutive night on a train. This, though, is the best of all possible journeys for we are heading west; it is the journey home.
Dad scored 14 points on his specialist subject, beaten, alas, by “Roman emperors of the first and second centuries”.
Christopher Morris
The Coastliner from Leeds to Whitby
Golden city walls, flowering woods and heathery moorland shift slowly past the window. The 75-mile trip between Leeds and Whitby takes 3½ hours on the Coastliner 840 bus. It’s not the quickest way to cover this epic stretch of Yorkshire countryside, but it’s my favourite.
This is a route I have travelled in all seasons: when spring daffs line the beck under pink-and-white blossom, and as the August moors turn purple under blazing blue. Autumn sees the Howardian Hills splashed with ochre and the bronze-brackened uplands stretching out towards the sea. And winter brings changeable dramatic skies, sudden sheets of sleet across the windows, and early sunsets silhouetting ruined Whitby Abbey on its cliff above the Esk.
Over the years, I have got off almost everywhere along the route: to eat raspberry gelato in Malton’s Talbot Yard, to admire 15th-century wall paintings in Pickering’s St Peter and St Paul’s church, and to stroll through autumnal larches in Dalby Forest up to the Fox and Rabbit Inn. But it’s the journey that delights me, especially the last hour. In 2018, the route was voted Britain’s most scenic bus ride and an onboard commentary was introduced.
Heading upstairs for the tables and big front windows, I meet other 840 superfans. One says she catches this bus every other day and never gets tired of the views; another likes to travel weekly from Whitby to Malton for “the scenery, a browse in the charity shops and a cheeky half in the Spotted Cow”.
The less scenic stretch between Leeds and York serves schoolchildren, shoppers and commuters. The less-frequent 840 buses beyond Malton might have a handful of passengers in winter, but in summer can fill up with daytrippers clutching towels and deflated lilos.
For those of us who love this journey, the long meditative miles of drystone wall and cow parsley, spacious landscapes and big skies are an end in themselves. Each journey reveals something new: a glimpse of viaduct along the River Wharfe in Tadcaster or the alien pyramid of RAF Fylingdales’ radar system.
The 840 is one of the best bargains created by the £2 bus fare cap, now extended until December 2024. Before this, a day ticket was £19. Matt Burley, commercial manager at Transdev, which runs the Coastliner, tells me the company is proud of Britain’s most scenic bus route and healthy passenger numbers: “With fares no more than £2, we’re seeing lots of customers travelling with us.”
On the top deck, I unwrap my sandwiches and look out at the unfurling vastness of the moors.
Phoebe Taplin
