London to the Black Sea… by train

Every five years the choir I sing in (the London Bulgarian Choir) tours Bulgaria. The tour has come round again, and this year things are kicking off at the Black Sea resort of Primorsko. When fellow singer Bernard, ever mindful of his carbon footprint, suggests travelling there by train, I don't hesitate. My first job in London was working for an international train company and I can't think of anything more fun than reliving the days when I'd criss-cross Europe by train in my time off. 

The train crew

The first leg of the journey is Eurostar to Paris, where I'm meeting the other five singers who are joining the overland adventure. I find them at the end of the platform.

All aboard at Gare de l'Est

The second leg is a fast train from Paris to Munich. We while away the hours playing Scrabble and watching Germany whizz by from the bar car. Following a slap-up meal of Bavarian carbs, washed down with giant glasses of beer, in a great restaurant inside Munich station, we go off to find our overnight train.

Sleeper to Zagreb and the gymnastics begin

The third leg is from Munich to Zagreb, Croatia, in a six-berth couchette. It's a bright, clean space, with bed linen provided for the three fold-down bunks on each side. But it's incredibly cramped, so it's one at a time as we sort out our bags, extract nightwear and toothbrushes and take it in turns to slot ourselves in. It's like a game of human Jenga. Since Zagreb is around the halfway point, in time and distance, we've booked an apartment for the night. But it's early in the morning so we cram our collected baggage into some lockers and head off in search of breakfast. 

Zagreb old town

Zagreb turns out to be a delight. The civic buildings have the feel of central European capitals with expansive cobbled squares and grand facades, while the churches feature onion-dome steeples and patterned roofs and remind me of Vienna. 

Getting high

I climb the tower for a view over the pretty red-tile roofs of the city centre and we all meet up in the Museum of Broken Relationships, a stylishly curated collection of mementos provided by contributors from all over the world, with the story of the ending of the relationship alongside. Visiting the museum is quite a journey – sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, but often heartbreakingly sad. 

The Museum of Broken Relationships

We lunch in a vegan cafe – yes, really – and in the evening dine in a highly recommended place in the old town where we are hilariously entertained by the banter between the dry-witted waiter and our friend Slaveia, who ends the evening with an invitation to visit the old lady who supplies the restaurant's outstanding olive oil, on her Croatian island.

Croatian coffee waiter

The fourth leg is from Zagreb to Belgrade, Serbia, the next morning, and the most eventful journey so far. Luckily we've reserved seats because the train is heaving. Much to our dismay, we have to turf out an old Serbian lady in a headscarf, but we find her another seat and she makes our day by donning mirrored Elvis sunglasses and twinkling at us from behind them for the rest of the journey.

Forever young

Two doped up pickpockets try to embark on a thieving spree along he carriage  but are blasted out by an eagle-eyed fellow passenger, and by our Bernard, who bravely fronts up to one of them. Meanwhile, the rest of the chaps are being given a severe dressing down by a female border guard for not having their passports to hand. They're secretly thrilled.

Our ticket office, Bernard 

And as we roll on through Serbia, we sing the only Serbian song we know, Aide Jano, and the rest of the carriage quietly joins in. One woman, her curiosity peaked, starts asking questions. She's sings a bit herself, she says. When we ask her to give us a song, she says she will need a minute or two to prepare. She comes back and begins to sing – something classical. Oh boy, she is good. Her clear voice resonates throughout the carriage and when she finishes everyone bursts into spontaneous applause. What a welcome to Belgrade.

Exploring Belgrade

We have a few hours to kill here, so we stash our bags and go off to explore. If the station feels a bit down at heel, the park outside resembles a refugee camp. Syrians, someone says. But it's before the overland migration hit the headlines so we're really not sure. Belgrade is being called the new Berlin and it's certainly got the edgy street art, the hippies in harem pants, and the stylish bars set in crumbling buildings. It has an iconic landmark that everyone gravitates towards, the castle, and we sit in a bar inside the old walls watching the sun set. We grab delicious filled pittas on the main drag, a long pedestrian street heaving with pavement restaurants and Saturday night crowds.

Alley cat 

King of the castle

The fifth leg is from Belgrade to Sofia, overnight. Back at the station, we wheel our luggage to the platform and wait for the graffiti-covered heap of junk that's sitting there to pull out. Then we realise it's not going to pull out, because it is our train. 

All we can do is laugh

It's worse on board. The compartment dimensions seem to have shrunk, the ladder is broken so we can't reach the top bunks, there's a massive hole in the ceiling, and all the curtains are hanging by a thread. The toilet is worse than anything I've seen at a festival, with a noxious gas in the air that has clearly been created by all the waste matter that is never cleaned away. Ugh. On the plus side, the train is so decrepit that the windows don't close, which means a cool, relatively refreshing breeze blows through the carriage all night.

More human Jenga

The next morning we wake up expecting to see the outskirts of Sofia. Slaveia talks to the guard in a hybrid Serbian/Bulgarian and we learn that we're still in Serbia. In fact, we're only a couple of hours out of Belgrade. The train had broken down in the night and by the time they fixed it, all the slots on the single-track line had been missed. Worse still, we'd been expecting to breakfast in Sofia, so have nothing to eat. Slaveia charms the guard into brewing us coffee, and parting with some of the fizzy drinks in his private fridge, and we survive on those, along with Eleanor's gluten-free snacks. 

Slaveia's hard-won coffee

Dreaming of breakfast

As we cross the border into Bulgaria, a whopping eight hours behind schedule, we sing Hubava Si Moya Goro, a Bulgarian anthem that goes, How Beautiful My Forest. 

Canine welcome at the border

The sixth leg is from Sofia to Burgas. There's a flurry of activity at Sofia station as we run around buying food, finding cash, purchasing new tickets. This train is clean and relatively contemporary – even the loos – apart from the door that keeps spontaneously slamming open. It's late when we pull into Burgas, past a vast and eerily illuminated chemical plant.

Health and safety be damned

Night lights near Burgas

The seventh and final leg is by taxi from Burgas to Primorsko, where we find showers, clean beds, the lovely friendly faces of the London Bulgarian Choir and, the following morning, a symbolic paddle in the sea. After four days, six trains and a distance of almost 1,800 miles, I think we've earned a rest.

Dipping my toes in the Black Sea 

The end of the road

When I’m up in the Highlands, it feels so far away from my home in London, I often forget that I’ve only travelled halfway up Scotland. A glorious day is a great excuse to down tools (we’re prepping our Aviemore house for holiday lets) and trek across the Northern Corries. I feel I’m up as high as high can be and, looking north, I can see the waters of the Moray Firth and the land stretching far beyond.

From the Cairngorms, across Loch Morlich, to the Moray Firth

The following day I borrow my brother’s car and drive in that direction. I’m joining my sister and some friends at a cottage they’ve rented in Sheigra. I've never been as far north-west as this. So off I go, across the Black Isle, along the shores of Loch Shin, towards the west coast, much of it on a single track road. It’s so quiet there isn’t much call for the passing places. We pass Kinlochbervie, the local metropolis, and a once-bustling fishing port, now well past its glory days. Finally I pass a sign to my destination… and the end of the road up the west coast of Scotland. The very tip of the mainland, Cape Wrath, is about 10 miles further on, but you have to get there on foot.

As far as the road goes

Here is a landscape of endless, deserted, curves of white sand, of cliffs and stacks, of lush green moorland dotted with sheep, and distant mountains with mist clouds creeping up their flanks.

Sheigra with backdrop drama

White sands of Polin beach

I walk the coastal path, navigating dark, soaring cliffs and descending tussocky headlands to cross vast empty beaches. I find a rusty old mine lodged in the sand, swept in from its ocean grave. A couple’s footprints wander across my own.

Dunes of Oldshoremore beach

Old mine washed ashore

The next day the haar rolls in, a cold sea fog that hugs the coastline. My sister and I walk inland and are soon above cloud level, following a stony track to Sandwood Bay. After an hour or so we arrive and take in the scattering of ruined crofts – a legacy of the Sutherland Clearances – before descending into the haar again, missing out this time on the bay’s famously glorious dunes and expanse of white sand.

Moor and lochans above the haar

Approaching mist-enveloped Sandwood Bay

Spooky beach view

I opt for a boat trip back to base with our friends and all the kids. It’s an atmospheric ride with ghostly stacks looming out of the swirling mists.

Boating through the stacks

Rainy weather suggests a trip to Smoo on the north coast, a huge cavern with water rushing down from the river above with a deafening roar. It’s too wild to take the boat trip up into the back of the cave so we go geocaching instead, finding a stash tucked away behind a boulder at the side of the road.

Geocache found

In nearby Durness, an old nuclear warning station and barracks, dating back to the Cold War, has been converted into a creative hub for all kinds of art, from painting to shellcraft. The Balnakeil Craft Village is also home to the mainland’s most northerly chocolatier, Cocoa Mountain, which not only boasts handmade truffles and cakes, but serves proper, rich, melted hot chocolate. Who minds a rainy day when such deliciousness is available?

Choccy high at Cocoa Mountain

Dart to Dart

As a lover of geography, realising that my weekend plans begin at the source of a river and end at its mouth gives me a real sense of satisfaction.

The river is the Dart, and I’m staying first in the leafy valley of Lustleigh, on the eastern fringe of Dartmoor, with Sheila, the widow of one of my dad’s dearest friends. The village’s trickling brooks, thatched cottages and village green remind me of the scenes that adorn boxes of Devon fudge. Looking across at its lush green patchwork of farms and woodland, you’d never know that just five minutes’ drive away is a landscape of bleak moorland and dramatically jutting tors.

The moor is a brooding contrast to the lush valleys and pastures below

A different rock drama plays out at the top of every hill

The nearest and best known of these geological wonders, Haytor, is a giant outcrop, with Dartmoor ponies grazing the grassy flanks and, on a clear day, views as far as the sea. It’s a big draw with tourists and rarely seen without figures standing at the top.

Views from Haytor stretch as far as the south coast

Sheila leads us on a walk over her favourite, and less busy, tors. It’s a breezy day with sunny intervals, giving the rocky outcrops atmospheric light and shade. Fast-moving shadows chase each other across the hillside opposite. We loop back via an old brideway, the sort of rough track you might imagine Poldark galloping along. 

Looking down to Widecombe valley

A tree going with the flow

We lunch at the picturesque Rugglestone Inn, in Widecombe-in-the-Moor. The pub dates back to 1822 and serves huge platters of homemade food that will see off any ideas you might have of ending the day with a Devon cream tea. I opt for Homity pie, a delicious pastry dish filled with potatoes, leeks and melted cheese. Dogs and ramblers abound in the pretty outdoor garden, as do morris dancers, in season.

It happens to be National Garden Scheme season so we fit in a visit to Spitchwick Manor, a rather ugly mansion saved by wooden trellising and six and a half acres of beautiful gardens, including a fabulously aromatic rose garden, featuring among others, the Darcey Bussell rose. We were also rather entranced by the estate’s separate secret garden, featuring Lady Ashburton’s plunge pool (commissioned by the estate’s original owners in 1763).

Spitchwick lupins

Lady Ashburton's secret pool

Not far from here is Dartmeet, where the East Dart and West Dart rivers merge to become the river Dart, which flows southwards to Dartmouth on the coast – my next stop. 

I conclude my weekend with a day and night in Chris’s father, Mike, and Jane’s pretty terraced house there. We pootle up the Dart on their river boat, Mr Toad, for early evening beers at the Ferry Boat Inn at Dittisham.

Riverfront at Dittisham 

The journey back, as dusk falls, is tranquil and hushed. There’s just the sound of the engine and the water fanning out in ripples. A lovely way to leave the Dart.

Ripples on the river Dart