I met ECM at Waverley station. From there we caught the train to a destination that ECM had been desperate to visit for decades.

Unfortunately Stirling was a great disappointment, so after a quick look at the dowdy main street, we turned around and returned to the railway station to catch the next train back to Edinburgh.

‘That will be £2700, and the next train is in 32 hours’ said the woman at the other side of the counter when we came to pay for our return tickets.

We had heard on the news all about inflation and limited rail services due to train strikes, but this was unbelievable. We could at least challenge the cost and ask if there was a cheaper way to travel to Scotland’s capital city.

The counter assistant rifled through a file of old orange card tickets and pulled out two.

‘This one is an unused ticket that somebody returned to us. That will do for one of you. This other one is a child’s ticket, but I’ll just rub out the word ‘pupil’ pencilled on the back, and that should do as your second one. You can have them free of charge.’

Now all we had to do was find a decent hotel to use as our waiting room until the arrival of the next train south.