Friday 8:30 saw us boarding the Caledonian Sleeper at Euston Station and meeting our team-mates face-to-face for the first time.
FirstScot Rail had completed cocked up the berth allocations and the staff were frantically trying to sort out the mess.
Steve was lucky enough to score a free upgrade to "first class" (I.e a single cabin without the top bunk). Ellie and Amber found themselves sharing a cabin via random chance and Kerry and Richard ended up in cabins by themselves when their cabin mates failed to show. Soo always had a "first class" cabin due to booking late ( she says...).
The Sleeper train (soon to be renamed the "dozer" train when it became evident that real sleep was difficult whilst being rattled around) was not exactly spacious... In fact Steve had to walk down the passage outsider the (tiny) cabins sideways as otherwise his shoulder's wedged wall to wall!
Gear was rapidly dumped in rooms once the berth allocation was sorted and everyone made a beeline for the "first class dining car" to get to know each other better with the assistance of certain well known social lubricants.
The team remains there bonding until just after 12, which was when Richard joined the train at Crewe to a hearty welcome of "Hello Duncan" from everyone in the lounge I.e. Us and 10 guys on a stag trip. Richard was very impressed with the enthusiasm of the welcome and was very gracious when pointing out we'd confused him with Duncan (who would join us the next day in Aberdeen).
Further festivities were cut short by the dining car being plunged into darkness by a blown circuit breaker that the engineer was unable to reset.
Cue mass exodus back to our room to begin our 7 hours of intermittent dozing until we arrived in Aberdeen at 7.30am Saturday morning.
More on Day 1 in the next installment...
Email blogging - Watching the dolphins and whales of the Moray Firth
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