Last month we were lucky enough to enjoy a weekend away from home in an area I had never visited, but heard lots about, Tyneside. Rather than getting a direct train from Peterborough to Newcastle, I’d planned a slightly more unusual route to enable me to try out a new Train Operator (for me), with us changing at York for a Grand Central service to Sunderland.

Straddling the River Nidd, the North Yorkshire town of Knaresborough is a historic market and spa town that has existed since before the Domesday book. Just a few miles east of Harrogate, the town is easily accessible from Leeds and York, making it a perfect location for a day out by train. I visited the town as part of my Yorkshire railday and so only spent an hour exploring before continuing on to York, but it is definitely worth a visit.

Following my day exploring the Capital of the Highlands, I decided to spend my final full day in the Highlands exploring a bit more of the Scotland’s railway and visiting another of the country’s seven cities, Aberdeen, the Granite City.

Inverness, capital of the Highlands and one of Scotland’s seven major cities, lies at the mouth of the River Ness where it meets the Beauly Firth just to the south of the famous Moray Firth. With Inverness sitting 903km from London, the UK capital is just 1km closer to the Highland city than the Norwegian capital of Oslo, and having arrived into the city of the Caledonian Sleeper, I certainly felt I was in a completely different world to the one I left behind in England.

Glasgow, Scotland’s second city, but the country’s most populous, is located on the banks of the River Clyde and, in rail terms at least, is the Gateway to the Highlands. With us passing through the city to get to and from our Highland Adventure, we decided we needed to spend some more time in the city and so, split between the start and end of the holiday, we did just that.

After a night in Fort William, a ride on The Jacobite and a wonderful couple of nights in Corrour, we were back on the West Highland line (WHL) and a ScotRail service, initially heading south to Crianlarich before changing trains and heading down the WHL’s western branch to Oban.