Newcastle to Edinburgh – one head fake then on to the land of Harry Potter

“Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.” – Jack Kerouac

So, as of Saturday morning our merry little band of four broke up with Mike and Melanie staying in the UK one more day to hike to the coast, roughly 6 miles from Segedunum and from there to Dublin while Rich and I made our way to Edinburgh. That trip ended up being a bit more of an adventure than either of us had planned as, once we got to the station, we found that our train had been cancelled 😮.

The above photo with Kings Cross station on it reminded me that I was in the land of Harry Potter but I did not realize at this point how much in the land of potter I was gong to be.

So, Rich and I hopped the train that the LNER (London Northeastern Railway) people instructed us to board got in our seats and, just as the train was ready to pull out, an announcement came over the PA that for those of us who were going to Edinburgh that there would be no further transport from Berwick (pronounced Barrick)! Regardless, we decided to stay on board and take our chances as Berwick was closer to Edinburgh than New Castle was, any forward progress is progress and, while we were on the train I hooked into the WIFI and found us some bus tickets from Berwick to Edinburgh, thank goodness for our ability to communicate in this day and time.

When we got to Berwick it ended up that the announcement was in error and LNER had made arrangements for buses to transport us to Edinburgh, though we did have to queue up for a while.

We finally boarded the bus and headed to Edinburgh where upon we got our first view of the North Sea

We finally got to Edinburgh and settled into a two bedroom flat on Chambers St. across from the Scottish National Museum and only one block from the Elephant House where J.K. Rowling is purported to have written the first Harry Potter Novel

More on Mr. Potter, Curling and Scotch whiskey tomorrow with an additional blog on just the Edinburgh Castle to follow so, stay tuned