Away day.

Stand-ins came to help in the shop yesterday whilst I used my rail card to take what must be one of the most beautiful railway journeys in Britain, through mountains, lochs and glens to Ross-shire, the western seaboard, and the unfortunately named community of Plockton. Once fishing and crofting was its reason for existing but, though in its heyday it boasted 500 inhabitants, the numbers dropped to a handful when the fish changed their migratory patterns and the potato famine took its toll. In recent years it has reinvented itself as a tourist attraction and has an artists colony - so I'm told, but I didn't see much evidence of that. The series about the Scottish bobby fresh down from Glasgow, finding it hard adjusting to the West Coast ways - 'Hamish Macbeth' - played by Robert Carlyle - was located there. Also some of the Inspector Alleyn Mysteries. Nothing of this possible notoriety is visible in the village - no plaques or mementos, no signed photies of local lad RC... nothing.

It sits in a sheltered sweep of hills on the shores of Loch Carron. The Gulf Stream warms the waters and palm trees grow along the shoreline. It wasn't a sunny day but it was rather magnificent with cloud and patches of sun hitting here and there on the far shores.

What they're not good at is signposts. I jumped from the train (the platform is a long way beneath the trains'step) the train drew out and I was left in the middle of pretty much no-where. There was a school opposite but it didn't look approachable and no-one to be seen and - no sign posts. Which way to start walking? I chose downhill. Luckily that was the right choice because it was nearly a mile to the village and I'm not much of walker.

After a wander I felt like lunch. It's a longish, 2 hour journey from Inverness, maybe because it has to be taken slowly which is fine by me, especially as the train practically overhangs the edges of the land in a few places and all the passenger can see looking down are sharp black basalt rocks on the beaches below. I found lunch in a hotel served by a portly American and a young English student. Times are changing evidently. The fish cake was nouvelle cuisine, sparse and rather cold but freshly made and tasty.

Forgive all the details - I get out so little I have to make the most of everything when I do. Once I'd had my meal I went back into the village to look for a taxi to take me to Eileen Donan castle which proved unexpectedly hard. I'd asked i the hotel for a number that turned out to be wrong. I tried a craft shop and got another number. There is one taxi in Plockton and he was away to Skye. The lady on the end of the phone couldn't understand me, reception not great I suppose, and most of the natives are Gaelic speakers, but she also had a machine whirring in the background, sounded elderly - possibly as old as me - and unused to mobiles. She told me to 'ring the Kyle man, he'll do it' then she rang off. I didn't have the Kyle man's number and when I turned round to go back into the craft shop it had closed for lunch - and so had all the other shops. As if a gong had sounded. I rang back the first number and screeched into her ear that I wanted to be picked up when her man returned.

Vis a vis the craft shops, artists' colony it might have, but that wasn't evident in the shops. It was all the same stuff that shows up in every 'craft' shop in Scotland and probably England too. Very disappointing.

Whilst I waited for the taxi to get back from its expedition to Skye I mooched around and watched various tour buses disgorge elderly folk. The busload I was closest to was organised by an extremely well-spoken, well-dressed Englishman, tall, slim, greying and distinguished. None of these attributes was cutting any ice with his charges who were told they could go 'anywhere they liked' but should reassemble in half an hour. Good lord! They all looked as if they needed the toilet (none on the coach) and I didn't hold out much hope of them getting a meal served and downed in that time, let alone seeing anything of the pretty village. There were murmurs of discontent. Memo to self - no saga tours for me.

Whilst I was watching this play out, a big red people-carrier arrived and sat placidly in front of the bus. The driver was evidently waiting for something - or someone. He looked at me and I looked at him. Several times we exchanged looks. Finally, when he saw I wasn't with the tour, he stuck his head out of the window: 'Taxi?' 'You are the taxi?' I asked. He nodded, satisfied. I got in.

As I said, they aren't good at signs.

Eileen Donan was fun and the most castle-like castle I've come across in the north of Scotland, where they tend to be more like fortified houses. It felt much more business-like stuck out on what's an island for part of the day. It is peopled with waxworks disconcertingly realistically going about their business. I skipped the usual bloody history rapidly (though noting that our own Bonny Earl of Moray, a man renouned for his love of discipline, was honoured by 50 severed heads on the walls when he visited. Yeurk!) The recontructed kitchen was fun with such realistic stews and stockpots that I could almost smell them. The jellies and moulds were a bit dusty though. I wrote down a recipe for 'Scottish trifle' which involves a pint of raspberry jam, half a pint of medium sherry, 5 eggs, sugar, a quart of cream, and ratafia biscuits, which I haven't seen for years.

Then the taxi driver picked me up and I got back on the train. 'Maintenance work' meant getting bussed between Dingwall and Inverness. Public Transport is such a chancy affair. The first train, Forres to Inverness, was cramped and uncomfortable ( sadists designed those seats that came out where they need to go in and vice versa). The bus was a nightmare - seats so close my knees were round my ears. The train to Plockton was bliss and luckily the return from Kyle of Lochalsh to Inverness also bliss. The bus from Dingwall was luxurious with a TV we didn't need, and the train from Inverness to Forres was comfortable.

It's a lottery.