[Vwoolf] Scotland again

[Stuart N. Clarke]

I feel sorry for tourists to the UK who attempt to use the railways, for I know they will be ripped off.  I’m sure that most people on this list will have at least one postgraduate degree, but you will need to apply considerable transferable skills to master the pricing structures.

I thought I would make a daytrip in the autumn next year to Abbotsford (http://www.scottsabbotsford.com/visit/), when the Borders Railway line (né Waverley line) reopens from Edinburgh.

“It is 50 years since Dr Richard Beeching's report on British Railways which led to hundreds of stations and 650 miles of railway line being closed in Scotland. The axing of the 98-mile Waverley Route from Edinburgh to Carlisle was the worst of all the Beeching cuts, according to author and railway expert David Spaven. The closure left the Scottish Borders as the only region of Britain without a train service and Hawick, 56 miles from Edinburgh and 42 miles from Carlisle, as the largest town farthest from a railway station.”

The terminus at Tweedbank will be only a 20 min. walk from Abbotsford.
http://www.bordersrailway.co.uk

In any case, it is in a sense *my* railway line:

STATIONS
Eskbank: close to Bonnyrigg (cousin lives there) & Lasswade (mother born there)
Newtongrange: cousin lives there
Gorebridge: maternal grandmother born there

Of course, it should never have been closed by Beeching, and should continue to Carlisle:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waverley_Line

Although VW wrote “Then there was Scott—he went bankrupt, and left, together with a few magnificent novels, one house, Abbotsford, which is perhaps the ugliest in the whole Empire” (“Middlebrow”, [Oct. 1932]), there is no evidence that she ever visited Abbotsford.  She came close in June 1938, visiting Scott’s grave in Dryburgh Abbey, but surely she would have mentioned it if she had actually visited Abbotsford?  (Similarly, I went on a driving holiday years ago and just missed visiting it – well, you can’t do everything.)
I thought that we’d have lunch in the restaurant. Unfortunately, I won’t want to eat a lot of the food:
http://www.scottsabbotsford.com/eat
It’s the sort of muck that I call “International British” – plenty of cream and cheese, and a tendency to mix sweet with savoury – so it’ll probably be just a sandwich.
Of course, I’ll take “Gas at Abbotsford” with me.
So: car to Preston; with luck free parking near the station, but probably £10 in the station car park; hopefully, £2.50 – yes £2.50 – return by train on the 7.53 to Edinburgh; arriving 10.23; return to Tweedbank (perhaps £13.10 return, less one-third with my Senior Rail Card: http://www.transportscotland.gov.uk/project/borders-railway), probably leaving at 10.54, arriving at Tweedbank c. 55 min. later; returning from Edinburgh on the 18.52; arriving Preston 21.17.
Stuart
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