Freelance Tour Manager for Rail Based vacations around the world
It happened again. I picked up another Tour, (this time only 24hrs notice) to Scotland. The Tour Manager had to go to hospital (Get better soon Lucy) and I got the “Please Help” phone call. The Tour was for Great Rail Journeys - Highland Adventure. Because of the short notice I had to do a …
I'm back home now and I have 3 days to prep for the Sicily Tour. I just realised that I never finished off the Shetland/Orkney. The problem was that the last day was a travel day and the Caledonian Sleeper WiFi wasn't working. What I'm going to do is just put up a couple of …
Yesterday we visited Jarlshof a world heritage site in the Shetlands where there are the remains of settlement buildings from the stone age, iron age, bronze age, viking period and 16th century, all layered under and over each other. Four thousand years of history in one place. From there we moved on to the lighthouse …
The sun came out… unexpectedly. We were treated with lovely morning Shetland sunshine and a strong blustery wind, which is pretty normal Shetland weather. Scalloway, the old Shetland capital before Lerwick was the base for the Shetland Bus during World War II. The Shetland Bus missions ran between Shetland and Nazi-occupied Norway, running in SOE …
So… off we go to Aberdeen on the Caledonian Sleeper train, leaving London Euston at 21:00 and arriving at 07:40. We left and arrived on time. This was my home for the journey. It’s tight, but just about manageable for two people. For one, no problem. I was asleep by 23:00 and slept through to …
Well, it's happened again. Sadly one of my colleagues has become unable to operate a Tour at short notice and so I'm off to cover for them. This time I've had about 2½ days notice so I have had to work rather fast to get the prep done. It was made much easier by the …
Continue reading "Shetland Isles and how to sleep on a Night Sleeper Train"
Today, our final full day on the Isle of Man, was a free day for the clients to explore at leisure. As I write, they’re still out at somewhere unknown. Having Fun. Alone and unsupervised! Better hope that doesn’t catch on. I planned out a voluntary excursion for those clients that had nothing better to …
Today was our visit to the top of Mt. Snaefell (2307 feet - 620mtrs) on the Snaefell Mountain Tramway. After some fabulous views, at about 1500 feet we entered the clouds… And didn’t come out! The visibility stayed at about 50 metres, and, since clouds contain the odd bit of moisture, it was wet. None …
Today we headed for the North & West side of the Isle of Man. The weather Gods decided to give us all a day off from being drenched after we sacrificed a small child. First stop was Tyndall Hill where the government of the Isle of Man (They’re independent, remember?) meet once a year to …
Our first full day on the Isle of Man and we experienced a biblical deluge for most of the day. I was surprised that we hadn’t mutated into webbed feet creatures by the evening. Fortunately, my clients are British (including some from Yorkshire!) and they are made of sterner stuff than others, and so took …
TimOnTheTrain 