Back in Time for a Break in Edinburgh

A Rail-Hotel Package Holiday in 1984

Our train Edinburgh Waverley

I started these "adventures" in 2011, as I tell in my first blog post the following year, but if I think back I have really been doing them for very much longer, having hankered after them longer still but not having the resources to fund them until the early eighties.

In 1984 I took a short holiday in Edinburgh with my wife and young son, then my only child, a baby. The previous year when we were a couple expecting our first baby we had been to York and thought we'd venture farther this time. We went in the autumn half-term holiday because my wife was a teacher, and we booked the package by telephone with British Rail's Superbreak package holiday scheme, rail travel and British Transport Hotel booked together at a reasonable price. For a small extra sum we could travel First Class: we had done it the previous year to give my pregnant wife the space and the reclining seat, but although that was no longer needed we thought it was such a good deal we did it anyway. In those days the long-distance HSTs, branded Inter-City 125, had a buffet car and a restaurant car and we decided to travel over lunch time and treat ourselves to a meal on the train, too.

The original Mk3 First Class seating: very 1970s!
The MaxPax coffee was also very 1970s and has
thankfully been long abandoned now.

We lived in Grantham at the time, so we had through trains to Edinburgh from our local station. After all this time I do not remember a great deal about the journey apart from it being very comfortable and comprising the usual great views from the train, especially north of York. As ever when travelling with a young child we were kept busy. We had a pushchair which folded flat and fitted reasonably well on the luggage stack, a shared suitcase (no wheels in those days: I carried the luggage!) and a shoulder bag which contained all the baby care equipment with the changing mat rolled round it as the outer cover. All very neat and compact.

Waiting for lunch

Lunch in the restaurant car was north of Newcastle as we travelled along the gorgeously scenic Northumberland coast, and the restaurant car staff were very attentive and loved that we had our little boy us. The only other passenger I remember being there at the time (there could have been others, but I only remember this one!) was a man travelling - or at least lunching - alone, and from his accent he was clearly from North America and was enthusing loudly about having been recommended to see the 'Fifth of Fourth" while in Scotland ...  The ticket inspector came along and he refused to show his tickets until after he had finished his meal, and while I understand that one may not want a meal disturbed, it was not difficult for me to reach into my pocket and show our tickets when our turn came, and to show them on demand is part of the conditions of carriage, but the inspector was not going to argue and resolved to ask him again on his way back through the train.

We stayed at the North British Hotel, immediately adjacent to the station at Edinburgh, then with an entrance directly off the station. We had a cot in an alcove in the room but our little one after such an exciting day found it hard to sleep. I transferred him back to his pushchair, reclined flat and tried pushing him round the hotel to lull him to sleep - the North British is built in a square around its palm court so I could walk him round and round while his mother tried to rest. I cannot remember now how the story ended but I do know we all had a reasonable night's sleep in the end! We have since returned to this hotel, now called The Balmoral, and it is a very different place, but one can still walk around the square!

It was in Princes Street Gardens on this holiday that our son had his first ride on a playground swing, and we walked up to the Palace of Holyroodhouse and visited The Georgian House in New Town, a National Trust for Scotland museum. We have lived in a couple of Georgian houses and thought it would be interesting to see what we could learn here - and it was amazing how similar this place was to the house in which we were living at the time, and even more so to the house in which I had lived with my parents before my marriage.

On one morning I went off on my own to explore, and I decided to take a local train to North Queensferry, which would take me across the Forth Bridge, giving me a great view of the famous Firth of Forth which had been extolled by our transatlantic travelling companion on the way there. In those days it was possible to see through the driver's cab at the front and rear of diesel multiple units and so I saw not only the Firth but also a fantastic view of the Forth Bridge now only available to train crew. Two bonuses on this little trip were (1) the presence of a submarine in the Firth, and (2) an airliner landing at the airport as I passed the end of the runway.

I don't remember the ride home at all, so presumably it was all fine. There were more of these trips to come over the next two or three years until we moved to Cirencester and lost our connection to the railway for a while. I'll have to see if I can dig up more photographs and more memories!

Some photographs of my trip over the Forth Bridge and back