caledonian sleeper train

an honest review

I did a job in Glasgow and, of the travel options I was presented with, one was the Caledonian Sleeper train. The other was a normal train.

I am trying to become a less controlled person. Yes, I come across as very chaotic, but my current chaos state would be roughly 75% worse if I wasn’t trying to control things all the time. I have many systems and many helpful ways of keeping myself swimming. I am the calm duck on the water with the feet furiously paddling underneath, except the duck has no feet. It’s not swimming straight or indeed upright but hey, it’s certainly moving more efficiently than it used to. It used to just sit there, quacking angrily underwater.

Yes this is relevant to the sleeper train, bear with me.

In trying to be more controlled, I realised recently I have gone too far and am dangerously close to being quite boring. Driving scared me, so I stopped learning. I want to go travelling but I’m too scared I’ll lose my passport and end up in a canoe and not be able to get out of the canoe, so I haven’t done that. On my tour I ate the same stuff, stayed in the same hotel chain and felt very sAfE.

The Caledonian Sleeper train, to someone who is uptight and boring, feels like a bad idea. If I hate it, I’m trapped for the entire night! What if the bed is not comfortable? What if i am claustrophobic in the room! What if there is a weird stain on the duvet! Very un-me.

Then I remembered David Mitchell said he loved the Caledonian Sleeper train, and he’s not particularly chilled out. Also, I am very time efficient, and the idea of killing two birds (travel and sleep) with one stone (a train) appealed.

Finally, it was on the BBC’s dime (pound) so - respecting that the BBC has limited budget and is going through tricky financial times - I requested my own room in club class which cos £260 for a single from Glasgow to London. You get a free breakfast and a little toilet/shower in the cabin; yes the toilet and the shower are combined, but more of that later.

Okay finally finally I thought: well if it’s shit I’ll get some content out of it.

Here is my experience of the sleeper train, for anyone who quite fancies it but is worried it will be bad. And while £260 is a lot of money for a train ticket, it’s not a lot of money for an overnight in a Premier Inn hotel plus a Glasgow to London train ticket the following morning plus breakfast. That’d be like £200 if you found a shit Premier Inn and a great train price! I am basing this on vibes, as I base all mathematic calculations, which isn’t consistent with my controlling nature but very well then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes (Walt Whitman, Leaves Of Grass).

10pm

Didn’t want to risk the food being bad on the sleeper train (controlling), so had a disappointing teriyaki tofu at a place near Glasgow Central that used silken tofu instead of firm tofu. Silken tofu, in my heart, reminds me of snot. It’s only good whizzed up in a sauce or made into a mousse. This may be a very white uneducated thing to say but I am white and my university degree doesn’t mean anything in this current climate.

The train doesn’t leave til 11.40, but apparently it starts boarding at ten so I arrive at ten on the dot.

10.15pm

The train starts boarding and I have to remind myself not to huff about due to the fifteen minute delay (controlling). It isn’t leaving for another hour and twenty five minutes.

Very smartly dressed men in little waistcoats greet me and my fellow passengers on the platform and check my name off a paper list with a pen, like it’s 1908. I also get a keycard, like it’s the present day.

10.17pm

I can’t get into the room because my suitcase won’t manoeuvre down the corridor leading up to the door of my cabin without severe jimmying. Keep this in mind if you are bringing a gigantic suitcase; mine is merely quite big.

10.20pm

After a successful James into the cabin, turns out it’s quite nice! Absolutely tiny, of course. Bunk beds, a little sink (which I won’t go near even though it looks clean, because I bet people piss in it) (controlling), a mirror on the door I’ve just come through, a little window with a blind and another door that I presume leads to a toilet because it has a sign on it that says ‘toilet’.

Here are more fun things in the club class cabin:

1. A golden pin to commemorate the ‘final season of the Overlander’ which I don’t understand but am excited to experience. I put it on my toilet bag.

2. Fudge. Can’t eat it because I’m vegan, but I’ll give it to my parents later who will put it in the cupboard in their kitchen with all the other bits of food they forget to eat. See also: glace cherries, half a bag of ground almonds and some Elizabeth Shaw mints from Christmas 2023.

3. A menu!!!!! With loads of vegan options!!!! There’s a vegan burger, olives, chips, a butternut squash soup and a raspberry and brownie. This is quite distressing because if I’d known there were actual vegan options available, I would have had a right old time of it.

4. Another menu for a free breakfast!!!!!! With a vegan fry up option!!!!!! I am able to hang this on my door and schedule exactly when I’d like to have a right old time of it (we get in at 7.15, so I choose 6.30 and then spend the rest of the night thinking ‘it won’t take me 45 minutes to eat the breakfast what was I thinking’)

5. Soap on the sink that I am scared to touch.

6. Two bottles of water. I am stretching the meaning of the word ‘fun’ here.

7. A speaker/microphone thing where you can order room service. Now I’m, once again, angry I’ve already eaten. I don’t need to use the speaker/microphone thing for the breakfast, because it’s scheduled. I want to use the speaker/microphone thing.

8. Drinks menu. The idea of getting a whiskey delivered to my cabin would be overwhelming except I have a lot on the next day so don’t want to drink and I hate whiskey.

9. Sleep kit with earplugs and a sleep mask, but I brought my own because I’m not a weak ass bitch etc (was worried they wouldn’t provide anything) (controlling).

10.25pm

I’d say, cleanliness-wise, this cabin is like a small version of one of the more acceptable Travelodges. Not the gross ones, not the surprisingly brilliant ones. It’s certainly comfortable and clean enough, but I wouldn’t eat off the floor or lick the walls.

I decide to have a wee to roadtest the bathroom, which is a bench that you lift up to reveal a metal toilet bowl. It’s cleaner than most other train toilet bowls I’ve seen/hovered over. The purpose of the bench is so you can use the shower nozzle while sat down (there is no room to stand) which I was considering trying out for a laugh, but then I’d be wet and I didn’t want to be wet while sitting on a bench toilet bowl.

Hanging on the door of the bathroom is a net bag containing, confusingly, about five towels. Maybe too many towels? Some joke about it being enough towels for the grandparents in Charlie and The Chocolate Factory plus Charlie, but that feels a bit done. I want to open the bag and explore the sizing of the towels, but can’t be arsed.

Worth mentioning that, if you have a big suitcase, it’s quite hard to find room to open it. I suppose the suitcase-sleeper train takehome is: be prepared to do a lot of dynamic jimmying. It’s quite exciting though. Feels like camping but without being outside and in a tent and all the things that make camping horrific for me personally.

10.30pm

I decide to sleep in the top bunk because that’s the more adventurous one (uncontrolling!). Also I’ve put my handbags and stuff on the bottom bunk, and recently saw a TikTok that was like ‘if you put your bag down on the floor of a public loo/on the actual floor outside and then just put it on your bed, you’re fucking disgusting’ so I’m trying not to do that (controlling?).

Yes, I’ve checked both mattresses and yes, they are both immaculate (I’m going to stop saying controlling now, because it’s annoying me so must be driving you mad). I live in fear that I will discover bed bugs and be the person who has to tell the establishment about it. What if they don’t believe me and won’t let me swap rooms and I have to sleep on the bugs? This is my great fear. Once, during that Paris bed bug outbreak a few years ago, I was on holiday in Fuertaventura and saw some blood on the duvet (a huge sign of bedbugs). I had skinned my knee the previous day, which had been intermittently bleeding, but insisted it was bed bugs and tried to sleep on the (tiled) floor on a hand towel.

When I get into the bunk, I can’t sit up due to the low ceiling and me being a tall woman. In order to get into a lying position, I must manoeuvre myself around as though my torso is a bit of rope being swung by a cowboy lassoing cattle. A sort of spiral motion.

Once down I’m not getting back up again, but thankfully there’s a little reading light and a place to charge your phone. Otherwise known as a plug socket.

It’s actually very cosy and fun and I sort of love it. There is free wifi which isn’t fast enough to watch anything but good enough to upload Instagram stories of me showing everyone the toilet.

11pm

After reading for a bit (London Falling, cracking bit of non-fiction) I start drifting off. I can’t hear anyone or anything, except when some very loud men walk past the door talking about yields. I presume this is a finance term, or maybe they are farmers.

11.40pm

I wake up when the train starts moving because the rattling of the wheels on the track sounds like I’m having an MRI scan. With the proximity of the ceiling, it sort of feels like I’m having an MRI scan too.

After a few minutes, the banging noises settle down and the rocking becomes soporific. The train is a womb and I am a baby. A baby in the womb of a woman who is travelling on a train.

3am

I wake up to the sound of rain and that lovely feeling of being rocked and think fuck me this is living.

6.30am

A man knocks at the door with a little bag for breakfast and I can reach it while remaining in bed! I mean, I could probably open the blinds and use the sink from the bed as well. And wee, but this would require a lengthy chute.

Because I can’t fully sit up, I am holding the bag of fry up while horizontally sticking out of the side of the bed like a snake. After some reverse lassoing, unable to sit anywhere (the bottom bunk doesn’t have enough room) wither I stand with one foot either side of my suitcase and eat the fry up in the traditional, vertical style. It’s nice! It contains two types of fake meat - bacon and sausage.

6.35pm

An announcement says we will be arriving into London Euston soon. I am overcome with the positivity of the decision I made. What efficiency! I was unconscious for pretty much the whole journey! It’s like that bit in Fifth Element where the passengers are put to sleep ahead of going into space! That always frightened me, but now I’m very much interested in being knocked out for all future travel.

I get changed and do my teeth then partake in a little more vertical standing as we approach Euston.

6.40pm

Another announcement says we are being held outside London Euston.

7am

Another announcement says we are still being held outside London Euston.

Very bored of standing in my tiny room, I decide to find the club car - a sort of lounge for the clubmen, of which I am one - but this takes a lot of jimmying because of the size of my suitcase. There are also no signs, so I pick a direction and hope for the best.

7.15am

I meet a woman who tells me the club car is definitely in the other direction, so she leapfrogs over my suitcase while I jimmy after her.

7.30am

We are now really late and I’m going to miss my connection. Clubmen with briefcases keep coming into the club car and loudly asking what time we will be getting in.

This is not the fault of the sleeper train, this is because London Euston is the shittest place on earth.

7.50am

We pull into Euston finally and I reflect that even though the delay was annoying, I would absolutely do the sleeper again. It was like being in the Girl Guides, but I can’t work out how. Maybe because, in the Girl Guides, we went on a field trip and slept in bunk beds at one point?

I’m not sure it helped me on my Being Less Controlled journey because I was overjoyed at the time efficiency (control) and properly annoyed when we got held outside Euston.

But I would highly recommend it, and would recommend getting the club car if you can. I don’t know for sure what the standard carriages are like, but I think they’re just like a normal train? Maybe slightly bigger seats? If you get a double seat, and can put headphones and a sleep mask on then that might still work? No, what am I saying, I would have had ten meltdowns.

Has anyone done the regular sleeper carriages that aren’t £260? Let me know in the comments what it’s like because I’m fascinated.

Now I’m just trying to work out how to recreate the rocking sensation at home, without being possessed. Maybe I’ll just listen to a soundscape of a train or something.