The road to Hampden (via Inverness)

I'm currently in Inverness where Dundee United are playing Inverness Caledonian Thistle in the quarter final of the Scottish Cup, kick off 12.30.

It's a round trip of 1100 miles. The game is live on television so I could have watched it at home but I'd rather be here.

On television Scottish football looks worse than it is (and it's not great). Paltry crowds suggest a poor atmosphere but that's not the case when you're in amongst them. The pies are pretty good too.

I can't remember the last time I visited Inverness – we may have driven through on a trip to Ullapool a few years ago – so when the draw was made I thought it would be fun to go.

I booked a berth on the Caledonian Sleeper and the train left Euston on Friday night at 9.15pm. (There's no service on Saturday.)

I love the idea of sleeper trains but the reality is quite rough, even in first class (which I treated myself to).

Put it this way, the Caledonian Sleeper is no Orient Express, although the attendant was very sweet.

I'll never forget the first time I travelled on a sleeper train. My father worked for Nestle and he was sent to manage a factory in Dundee.

So in May 1969 we left our home in Maidenhead, drove to the old motor rail terminal in Olympia and arrived the next morning in Perth, ready to begin a new life in Scotland.

Later, when I lived in Edinburgh in the Nineties, I was a regular on the overnight sleeper. It was cheaper than staying in a hotel in London and for an extra £25 you could have a compartment to yourself, even in standard class.

It may be an additional £40 now but it's worth every penny. The sleeping berths are so small you really don't want to share with anyone, let alone a stranger.

Anyway, I've travelled by train to most parts of the country but I've never done the Highland line between Perth and Inverness and I've always wanted to.

So yesterday morning, after a fitful night's sleep, I made sure I was awake at 6.00am to enjoy the scenery.

We were already at Pitlochry (where I camped with friends in 1973 and got hideously drunk on Newcastle Brown Ale) and heading toward the Cairngorms.

I sat up in bed and watched as the rolling hills turned into small mountains. There was snow on most of the peaks and although the sky was grey and overcast we still got a pretty good view.

The train stopped at various stations – Blair Atholl, Newtonmore, Kingussie – where there were few signs of life.

Eventually, at 8.30, we rolled into Inverness and momentarily I felt a long way from home. It was too early to book into my hotel so I found a coffee shop, and later a pub, wandered around and generally killed time.

The city centre is nothing to write home about but there are some beautiful Victorian houses along the banks of the picturesque River Ness, many of them converted into small hotels overlooking the river. I'm staying in one of them.

Directly across the river is the Eden Court Theatre, a modern building that nevertheless blends in well with its surroundings. I got quite excited, thinking I could finally see a production of The Mousetrap, but it's not on until June. I'll have to come back.

It's an idyllic spot but I've got to check out in a few minutes.

After the match I've got a long wait until the sleeper takes me back to London. (It leaves at 8.30pm, arriving in Euston eleven and a half hours later at 8.00.)

Apparently the hotel next to the station offers "wash and change" rooms you can book for four hours. I might do that, or I might settle down next to the fire in the drawing room and read a book.

Or I might watch England-Wales. In a pub. In Scotland.

It doesn't get much better than that.

PS. Road signs to Kyle of Lochalsh remind me of another train journey.

At Aberdeen University in the Seventies the student charities committee organised an annual trip to Kyle of Lochalsh which overlooks the Isle of Skye.

They would charter a train and 400 students would embark on a round trip that involved a huge amount of alcohol and almost no food apart from mugs of soup.

In my first year, as a member of the charities committee, I helped organise the event. All went well (apart from one student splicing off the top of his thumb in a sliding door) until we got to our destination on the west coast.

Although press reports exaggerated the carnage it is fair to say that some students ran amok. One even fell in the water (it was February and freezing) trying to jump on the Skye ferry which had just set off.

On the way back a four hour journey became a 16-hour descent into hell. The communication cord was pulled so many times the train eventually ran out of fuel.

British Rail (as it then was) took the decision to put the train into a siding outside Inverness and wait for everyone to sober up. We eventually limped back into Aberdeen the following morning.

The next year we had more problems on the return journey but for very different reasons.

This time the weather was so bad we were the last train allowed to leave Kyle of Lochalsh but that didn't stop us getting stuck in snow en route.

Somewhere, in the Aberdeen Press & Journal archive, there is a newspaper with a picture of me and my friend Dougie Kerr, later chairman of the charities committee, apparently digging the locomotive out of a huge snow drift with a couple of spades.

In truth, we were doing it merely for the camera. The real work was going on out of shot.

That night we shared our soup with some OAPs who were on another train, going in the opposite direction, that was also stuck in snow.

As a result, and in contrast to the previous year, the local press treated us like heroes rather than drunken louts.

Sadly that was the last Aberdeen student charities' train. Curiously, the event never seemed to make any money.

I'm told the residents of Kyle of Lochalsh breathed a huge sigh of relief.