The Wrong Train North

Ignacio had planned his holiday in Scotland very carefully: three days in Edinburgh, three days in Glasgow, then a flight home to Valencia. On Wednesday morning he arrived at the station in Edinburgh a little late, jumped on the first train at the platform and put his backpack on the rack above his seat. He didn't check the screen. That was his first mistake. The second was falling asleep.

When he woke up, the city had disappeared. Outside the window there were mountains, dark lakes and no buildings at all, only a few sheep. He looked at his phone: two hours had passed. A woman across the aisle was knitting. "Excuse me," he said, "is this the train to Glasgow?" She laughed kindly. "Oh no, love. This is the train to Inverness. You're in the Highlands."

Ignacio got off at the next station, a tiny village with one platform, a red phone box and a sign in English and Gaelic. The next train back south wasn't until the evening. It was raining, of course. He stood under the small roof and thought, "If I had checked the screen, I would be in Glasgow now, eating lunch somewhere warm."

The woman from the train had gotten off too, because she lived in the village. Her name was Morag, and she ran the only guesthouse. "You can't wait here for six hours," she said. "Come and have some soup." At her house he met her husband, Alasdair, who was a fisherman, and their teenage son, Callum, who wanted to practice the Spanish he was learning at school.

After lunch, Alasdair took him out on the loch in his little boat. The rain stopped, the sun came out and a rainbow appeared over the mountains. Ignacio had never seen anything so beautiful. In the evening there was music at the village pub: two fiddles, a guitar and about twenty people singing songs he didn't understand. He missed the evening train. He didn't mind at all.

In the end, he stayed in the village for three nights instead of going to Glasgow. He helped Alasdair repair the boat, taught Callum some useful Spanish phrases and learned to make a terrible version of Morag's soup. When he finally left, the whole family came to the station to say goodbye.

Now, back in Valencia, Ignacio often tells the story to his friends. "If I hadn't fallen asleep on that train, I wouldn't know the kindest people in Scotland," he says. Every year he receives a Christmas card from the Highlands, and he is already planning his next trip. This time, though, he is going to take the wrong train on purpose.