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Scottish Surprise

BY CARL LARSEN BY SLEEPER TO THE "NORTHERN PART OF THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE"

I 've got a travel secret to share, and it starts
off with a wee dram of Scotch at London's Eu-
ston Station late in the evening. Oh, and this
story has a famous cat.
I can't call my drink Scotch for long, how-
ever, because in a few hours I will be in Scotland,
where years ago I was admonished by a sassy bar-
tender when I ordered my drink of choice.
"Sir, you ARE in Scotland," she told me curtly at a
pub on the Isle of Mull. "To you, it's whisky."
Having learned my lesson, I sidled up to the bar
at Euston's first-class passenger lounge on an fall
evening and asked for my preferred Scottish-dis-
tilled liquor by brand name instead.
Tickets in hand, having ended a day of sightsee-
ing in central London, my wife Sharon and I were
headed to Scotland by train, an easily done
overnight excursion that seemingly few Americans
know about. We'll be aboard the Caledonian
Sleeper, one of the many sleeper trains that The
Wall Street Journal reported are "back in vogue,"
particularly in Europe. Refreshed from the gentle
overnight rocking of the train, we're scheduled to
arrive in the next morning around breakfast time.
My secret is this: When we wake up, we'll be
high up in the Scottish Highlands, running on a sin-
gle-track route across the broad and forbidding
Rannoch Moor with a brief stop at its desolate sta-
tion -- the highest in the U.K. We're on one of the
most famous of railways -- the West Highland
Line. Going further, we'll arrive in the town of
Fort William, hard by Loch Ness and its camera-
shy "monster" and watched over by Ben Nevis, the
highest mountain in the British Isles.
Making this ride even more memorable will be
our accommodations, or rolling stock. We'll be rid-
ing in shiny new carriages that were just months
old and which are part of a global resurgence of
sleeper trains. The Caledonian Sleeper, with roots

202 WINE DINE & TRAVEL MAGAZINE 2020