Royal Scotsman offers a stylish ride in the highlands
A journey on Belmond’s Royal Scotsman puts travellers on track for spectacular views and sheer luxury in opulent settings.
In Keith, a Speyside whisky town, I’m woken by the departing clank of ScotRail’s 6am service to Aberdeen. I rouse myself in time to see the train pull away and glimpse bleary-eyed passengers beyond the dirty windows of workaday carriages. I feel for these poor souls, as much for the unearthly hour as for the commute that lies ahead, but mainly because there are trains, evidently, and then there are trains. And my one looks, and no doubt smells, nothing like theirs. While they’re slumped in worn seats, sipping takeaway coffees, I’m tucked up beneath a down duvet in my private cabin, the wood-panelled walls finished in mahogany marquetry and hung with Edwardian-era prints. The window table is topped with writing paper and a vase of fresh heather sprigs, and the ensuite bathroom is kitted out with slippers, bathrobe, assorted gels and soaps and piping hot shower.
Welcome to Belmond’s Royal Scotsman, which runs an extensive range of luxury tours from April to October, when the days are long even if, this being the Scottish Highlands, they are not always what Australians consider summery (another virtue of my cabin being a super-efficient heating system). Stablemate of legendary luxury sleeper trains Venice Simplon-Orient-Express (London to Venice) and Eastern and Oriental Express (Bangkok to Singapore), Royal Scotsman’s routes are invariably Edinburgh to Edinburgh if only because Scotland, for all its glories, is compact, with a correspondingly limited rail network.
Indeed, it’s tempting to point out that for about 1 per cent or 2 per cent of the cost of our four-night Scotland’s Classic Splendours tour, you could leave the capital on national rail operator ScotRail’s first scheduled service of the day, take in every inch of track we are to cover and still be back in Edinburgh for dinner, albeit fearfully late. And it wouldn’t be a patch on the spectacular affairs, with liqueurs and live music to follow, to which we are treated; and anyway the exercise would be to miss the point of Royal Scotsman entirely.
Which is a progress as leisurely as it is luxurious, the more so to enjoy views of lochs and rivers, and moors clad in yellow gorse beneath the snow-capped peaks of the Cairngorms range, while marvelling at the culinary miracles executive chef Marc Tamburrini and his team conjure from their tiny galley.
The dining is as rich in the best Scottish produce – halibut from the Isle of Gigha, Pentland lamb, Uist crab, Shetland lobster – as the tour is in quintessentially Scottish encounters and excursions. So it is that Royal Scotsman, with its 10 elegantly refitted 1960s Pullman carriages, covers what ground it must during the day, passing the night in quiet sidings at towns such as Keith, or cities like Dundee, where its capacity 40 guests wake to those reminders that it is the sad fate of most people to take trains to work.
We join our fellow guests at Edinburgh’s Balmoral Hotel where to this day the iconic tower clock is set three minutes fast to ensure passengers don’t miss their trains at the adjacent Waverley Station. In former times, when the Balmoral was called the North British Station Hotel, guests were delivered direct to Waverley by a hotel lift no longer, sadly, in operation. It proves the shortest of walks – the three minutes is plenty – to platform 2 where Royal Scotsman, in handsome maroon livery with gold lettering, awaits us. A piper in full Highland kit – bagpipes, pleated kilt, plaid cloak, buckled shoes, feathered bonnet and sporran – draws a crowd as he plays us aboard.
We gather in the Observation Car, which is decked out with sofas, tartan throws and side tables topped with chessboards and period lamps in the manner of an elegant drawing room. Host Mark Nash introduces himself over Champagne – Belmond owners LVMH partner brand Veuve Clicquot – and strawberries from nearby Arbroath. He likens what lies ahead to a country house party on the move. “You may not know each other now,” he tells us. “But I assure you by the time we’re done you’ll have made lifelong friends.”
We set about the process over canapes of black pudding bonbons and monkfish tempura. As the train trundles out of Edinburgh, we chat, window-watch or take to the open deck at the back of the Observation Car to savour the air. We cross the iconic Forth Bridge, once the world’s longest single-span bridge, before fields of yellow rape and golf links stretch to the golden beaches along Scotland’s east coast. Weathered villages of grey granite cluster on rocky outcrops.
We’re north of Aberdeen, the light fading, as we make for the dining cars where the guests, mostly from Europe and the US, continue their mixing over Scottish salmon served with a Salt River sauvignon blanc from South Africa followed by Gressingham duck (with a New Zealand pinot noir). It’s a typically terrific dinner that’s followed by a rousing set from a visiting folk duo who perform on guitar and accordion in the Observation Car. There are accompanying drams, as there must be here in whisky’s hallowed heartlands (at Keith, for example, we are just yards from the Strathisla Distillery, home of Chivas Regal).
It’s no accident that Royal Scotsman’s crew, 18-strong, should run to a dedicated whisky ambassador, who delights in acquainting us with the train’s extensive selection of blends and single malts. The fact Sylwia is from Poland, better known for its vodkas, has in no way limited her appreciation of whisky. When she is not being quizzed on the subject (or asked how one becomes a whisky ambassador), Sylwia makes it her business to turn up with a sampling bottle from whatever distillery happens to be passing.
No surprise, that there should be takers for the pre-breakfast walk that Nash leads the next morning, as he does most days. Whether it’s a walk around Keith or over the bridge at Kyle of Lochalsh to Skye on the west coast, it’s a welcome chance for us all to clear our heads as much as to stretch our legs. Mark, formerly a military man, is not one to tolerate dawdlers, and for good reason, because there are real trains about, with real schedules to keep, and one of Mark’s many jobs is to ensure Royal Scotsman does not get in their way. Excursions punctuate the tour, providing insights into Scottish Highlands life.
There is a guided walk along the banks of the lovely Garve River, an 18th-century droving route, in the company of Highland historian Andrew McKenzie, a man so wedded to his subject he leads us in period droving dress, including authentic “droving shoes” he has fashioned from deer hide. There are visits to Ballindalloch, among the oldest and most romantic of Scottish castles, and to Glamis, with its strong connections to the British monarchy. At the Rothiemurchus Estate we try our hands at fly fishing and clay pigeon shooting. At Pitlochry’s Blair Athol distillery, where the barrel warehouse is said to be festooned in “cobwebs older than many countries”, we go gooey at the taste of a 23-year single malt. And at the lovely gardens at Attadale on Loch Carron, Joanna Macpherson shows us round her late mother’s much-admired labour of love. The fernery, Japanese garden, the stands of subtropical gunnera and rhododendron, and lichen-clad birch woods are as green and verdant as the Scottish Highlands can be treeless and bleak, and a reminder of this country’s magnificently varied scenery. Over tea and a chat with Ewan Macpherson, Attadale estate’s nonagenarian laird, we’re made to feel less like tourists than honoured guests.
Then it’s back on-board where some have booked massages in Royal Scotsman’s Dior Spa treatment rooms, as the train heads for Dundee. It’s our last evening, with a gala dinner, and many of us are minded to enter into the occasion by dressing up, the women in kilted skirts, the men in full Highland dress hired through Belmond from Edinburgh outfitter Kinloch Anderson.
It’s not until we have feasted all too well – fillet of local Aberdeen Angus beef, served with a Chateauneuf-du-Pape – that Mark announces we have some traditional Scottish dance moves to learn. He walks us through them to the accompaniment of accordion and fiddle. Guests and staff join in, performing the Flying Scotsman and the Virginia Reel. To laughter, revelry and embrace, a late-night ceilidh breaks out on Dundee Station’s platform 4. It is a rousing, even moving, finale to what has proved an exceptional experience.
And by time we pull into Edinburgh the following morning our fellow guests, as Mark predicted, have indeed become firm friends.
Jeremy Seal was a guest of Belmond
in the know
Royal Scotsman, a Belmond Train, offers tours ranging from two to seven nights. New for 2023 are themed options, including Highland Survival Adventure and A Taste of Scotland with Michelin-starred Edinburgh chef Tom Kitchin. The four-night Scotland’s Classic Splendours journey starts at £7500 ($14,000) a person, twin-share. The price includes 24-hour steward service, all on-board meals with alcoholic beverages, excursions and entertainment. Twin cabins are 7.9sqm and have two fixed lower-berth single beds, dressing table, full-length wardrobe, electrically controlled heating, cooling electric fans, opening windows and a call button. Each cabin has a private ensuite with shower, washbasin and toilet. Two sumptuous Grand Suites are to be added to the train for 2024.
