I travelled 112 miles from Inverness to Wick for £2. Part 2.

Sunday 29th March 2026

I left you in yesterday’s Part 1 arriving in Wick at 11:24 on Wednesday morning following a three hour, three minute coach journey with ember from Inverness costing £2, after journeying up to Inverness from Hassocks on Tuesday taking four hours and 32 minutes with Thameslink, easyJet and ScotRail costing £51.49 (£56.79 without a Railcard).

Now, it’s 12:34 on Wednesday and time to head south by rail. I’d planned a longer stay but a bitterly cold and windy Wick with intermittent sleet showers didn’t feel very welcoming so decided to leave on an earlier train after staying in the town for only an hour.

I’d taken advantage of booking an Advanced Single three weeks ago for my journey back down to Inverness with ScotRail and the train guard kindly let me travel earlier than the ticket specified. It cost £11.05 (with a Senior Railcard) which was a saving of £7.55 over the turn up and go Anytime Single price of £18.60 (£28 without a Railcard).

Obviously these prices don’t compare well with the newly introduced £2 bus fare cap funded by Transport Scotland now available on both ember’s route E6 and Stagecoach’s X99 and indeed all bus routes across the Highlands and Islands as explained yesterday. Ember’s previous commercial fare was £14.75 and from a previous journey I made with Stagecoach in 2024, its ‘normal’ price (then) was £28, making for a much more favourable comparison with rail.

However as Transport Scotland also heavily subsidises ScotRail, not least the Far North Line, it’s now got a financial finger firmly in both modes across the Highlands so good luck with that. It looks to me like a very disjointed ‘unintegrated’ policy decision which will make the finances of the Far North Line even more difficult.

Like ember, ScotRail runs four return journeys between Wick and Inverness on Mondays to Saturdays but with just one on Sundays whereas ember runs four that day too. The 12:34 journey I travelled on takes four hours and 34 minutes, almost exactly an hour and a half longer than my journey north with ember. Had I caught the next (originally intended) journey at 16:00 it would have been slighly quicker at four hours, 13 minutes due to fewer station calls.

Despite the end to end journey by rail costing over five times as much and taking 50% longer I always enjoy a journey on the Far North Line with its varied beautiful scenery from coast to mountains and I’m delighted to be a life member of the Friends of the Far North Line (FoFNL) led by the energetic and enthusiastic Ian Budd who produces a wonderful magazine three times a year.

It’s interesting to compare the routes taken by coach and train. Whereas the coach in the main follows the coastal A9 (shown on the left on the maps below), the rail tracks sweep inland for two long sections of the route (shown on the right).

This really makes for stark journey time comparisons. For example, the coach takes just 50 minutes along the coast from Wick to Helmsdale (having begun its journey in Thurso) but the train begins in Wick then deviates to double run to Thurso and then the tracks take it inland via Kinbrace taking more than double that time at one hour and 47 minutes.

Similarly, from Golspie to Tain the coach takes half an hour (including a double run to Dornoch) while the train goes inland via Lairg and takes double that time at an hour.

Now there’s such a politically manipulated and significant fare differential I think the train will struggle for market share especially taking those time differentials into account.

My journey on Wednesday afternoon had a two coach Class 158. It wasn’t very busy with around a couple of dozen passengers at most on board at any one time so luckily that meant a table for four to myself and therefore ample leg room. A busy train and a table of four all occupied and leg room is very restricted.

Obviously the train has an accessible toilet but no refreshments were available for the four and a half hours on board.

Because of its long single track sections, not least south of Dingwall, with no passing places, trains are very susceptible to knock on delays once something has gone wrong but thankfully on Wednesday afternoon everything went smoothly and we arrived into Inverness exactly on time at 17:08.

We’d skipped most of the request stations at speed thanks to the new passenger request devices now installed although I noticed we almost came to a halt at the controversial request station at Altnabreac which is now back open again following legal issues with the owners of the former station property. As we passed by I think it must have been the owner of the property who was on the platform which may have confused the driver as he approached.

One day I’ll alight here just because you now can – it’s one of the few stations in Britain with no road access.

As always, I thoroughly enjoyed the journey all the way to Inverness.

After a second night in Inverness, Thursday morning saw me back at the station for the journey back south to Hassocks which was in the hands of the once a day LNER train from Inverness to King’s Cross.

It leaves at 07:55 with a scheduled journey time of eight hours, seven minutes giving an arrival into King’s Cross at 16:02.

A Super Off-Peak Single from Inverness to Hassocks (thankfully still available despite LNER’s efforts to “simplify” fares by doing away with many of them) with a Senior Railcard costs £83.90 (£126 without a Railcard).

£83.90 sounds so much more reasonable as a price to pay compared to the old days of calling it £167.80 for a return ticket – which, of course, it still is!

An eight hour journey in Standard Class on an LNER Azuma train with its notoriously uncomfortable seats is not my idea of a pleasurable experience so I splashed out on a First Class Advance ticket as far as King’s Cross, which at the time of booking on 3rd March was priced of £108.65 (with a Senior Railcard). A couple of weeks earlier when I was sussing out options it was only £96.

Had I bought the Super Off-Peak Single at £83.90 and risked bidding for a SeatFrog upgrade to First Class before departure, I noticed on Thursday morning the bidding was starting at £47 so I’d have been worse off, even if I’d won.

A Standard Class Off-Peak Single with Thameslink from St Pancras to get me home to Hassocks cost £12.85 making for an overall price of £121.50 for the 610 mile journey from Inverness to Hassocks. Without a Railcard it would have been £182.25.

As it is, the price I paid was over double (2.3 times) the £51.98 price of my northbound journey to Inverness with easyJet (and connecting trains) and more than double the end to end journey time but ….. is definitely a hugely more enjoyable travel experience.

Just turning up at Inverness railway station and passing through the (open) ticket gates is simple and straightforward compared to passing through security and all the boarding hassle at Gatwick Airport even though I didn’t experience any delays as described in yesterday’s blog, it still feels unfriendly, not least hanging round the departure lounge for ages.

It’s also a stark comparison between the cramped conditions on board an easyJet aircraft offering only paid for refreshments with the spacious seats and tables provided in LNER’s First Class, together with its excellent complimentary refreshment choices.

For me, the extra cost is well worth paying, not least for the stunning scenic views available through the Highlands and along the East Coast Main Line. It is a truly enjoyable experience.

If minimising journey time is an over riding objective then obviously a flight is ideal especially if, like myself, you live fairly close to an airport. But if time is not a major factor but cost is, I’d rather make fewer journeys so I can afford the much more enjoyable ambiance of rail over air.

My eight hour journey south on Thursday through the Highlands and down the East Coast was ‘first class’ in every respect.

LNER’s on board staff were excellent. The iconic views out of the window on a Spring sunny morning through the Highlands…

… south of Edinburgh …

… Berwick-upon-Tweed …

… Newcastle-upon-Tyne…

… and Durham …

…were as stunning as always.

This was the first time I’d taken LNER’s Inverness service all the way to King’s Cross previously always using ScotRail and breaking my journey in Edinburgh, and Thursday’s experience didn’t disappoint.

Timekeeping went well until we reached Temple Hirst Junction halfway between York and Doncaster where we came to a halt for 23 minutes due to “a report of a tarpaulin entangled on the overhead wires ahead” which luckily proved either to be false or must have blown away of its own accord. Despite scheduled calls at Doncaster, Newark Northgate and Peterborough we made up seven minutes of this delay and reached King’s Cross at 16:18 instead of the advertised time of 16:02.

Had I been on GWR or Avanti West Coast that delay (over 15 minutes) would have qualified for 25% compensation of £27.16 but LNER has a stricter 30 minutes qualifying minimum. It’s also worth noting easyJet has no comparable Delay Repay compensation scheme.

In any event thanks to the short walk from King’s Cross across to St Pancras, I easily caught the 16:30 Thameslink departure to Hassocks (rather than the originally planned 16:20 departure) – thus reducing the overall delay to just 10 minutes.

This saw me arrive into Hassocks at 17:38 – nine hours, 43 minutes after leaving Inverness.

Google reckons it would take me 10 hours and 25 minutes to drive – and that’s assuming the A9/M80/M74/A74(M)/M6/M40/M25/M23 were all behaving, which is some assumption, and doesn’t take account of any necessary driving breaks. Interestingly if I’d opted to fly back the 14:55 easyJet departure from Inverness would have got me to Gatwick for 16:40 and therefore a similar arrival time back in Hassocks at 17:38. I’d have had to catch the 13:30 ScotRail departure from Inverness arriving at the Airport station at 13:40.

I’d have enjoyed five and a half hours extra in Inverness on Thursday morning and saved around £70 but I’d have missed all those lovely views and the wonderful travel experience the train offers.

Roger French

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