Sep 19th, 2019

Author: donich_admin

Travelling the (very) Expensive way

I had to laugh at this a bit. I’ve been on the Northern Belle a couple of times with my Mum at Christmas, but £225 (this is the reduced price) to travel between Dumbarton and some unspecified destination on the West Highland line is a bit steep even for me.

The Northern Belle train is lovely, but even say it goes to Oban, which is realistically probably as far as you can do in a day trip, the fare on the ordinary train is £26. It is not that luxurious but is comfortable enough. So then a super luxury picnic which you could eat on the train(say three sorts of sandwiches, sausage rolls, quiche and strawberries and cream with a bottle of wine) would be about £15 a head. For a total cost of about £40. Or you could get out in Oban, have a walk down the front and eat in one of the nice little restaurants there and it would still be no more than £100 each tops including the train.
I’m not greatly surprised that they are not getting a lot of takers for this – R says I am price insensitive, but I am not quite that price insensitive.