In May of this year I visited Scotland with my dad. It was a present from him which I got after I graduated my master of science. My dad said I could choose any place and we’d go there together. And as you might know, I don’t fly (on fossil fuels) as long as we’re in a climate crisis. And so I looked for other nice places to visited. I ended up choosing Scotland, because I heard from many people around me that it is beautiful. My dad and I traveled sustainably, by train. Today I want to tell you everything about this trip. Here’s how we traveled from Amsterdam to Edinburgh by train.
The fastest route from Amsterdam to Edinburgh by train
As far as I know, there’s only one way to get from Amsterdam to Edinburgh by train: via London. There’s also only one way to get from Amsterdam to London by train. Therefore, this is a pretty easy trip. However, the route the trains take may differ. The begin and end station are always the same, but the travel time may differ. You go from Amsterdam to London and there you step into a train straight to Edinburgh. Only one transit. If you take the fastest trains, the trip from Amsterdam to London takes 4 hours and 13 minutes and the trip from London to Edinburgh takes 4 hours and 20 minutes. This makes the length of the entire trip 8 hours and 33 minutes, without transit time. In the picture below you see the fastest route.
The question here is whether you want to do this within one day. In theory it’s very well possible. I would always advice to take a two hour transit period. The first train leaves Amsterdam around 6:00 (but beware! You have to go through customs because you’re leaving the European Union, it’s mandatory to be present 60 minutes before departure). The trains from London to Edinburgh leaves every half-hour, so that’s no problem.
The route I took from Amsterdam to Edinburgh by train
I personally like traveling slow and comfortable, and since I traveled with my dad we chose to split this trip in half. We stayed the night in London, booked a hostel and stayed there overnight to split the trip in half and not have to get up so early. The advantage of this that we also got to go to my favorite restaurant in London. Since we split the trip in half we also took a slower train from London to Edinburgh on day two. We had time and the slower trip was a bit cheaper. This trip took 6 hours and 2 minutes, so almost 2 hours longer. I don’t remember how much money we saved this way, but in a bit I’ll tell you how much we paid. Below you see the route we took instead. Like I said, still a direct train, just a bit slower.
Train fares and where to book them
Let’s talk about the money. I want to tell you about the cheapest fare and the fare I paid. The cheapest fare for a single trip is 101 euros (in July 2024). The trip from Amsterdam to London costs 57 euros at cheapest. The trip from London to Edinburgh costs 37 pounds at cheapest (in July 2024 this is 44 euros).
I paid more for our trip, I paid 84 euros per person for the trip from Amsterdam to London and 44 pounds (52 euros) per person for the trip from London to Edinburgh. That means I paid 128 per person in total, 27 more than the cheapest option. The reason I paid more is because the cheap options are usually only available very early in the morning or the late afternoon for the trip from Amsterdam to London. We didn’t like that. We wanted to get up at a normal time, have enough time to travel to the train station and also arrive at a normal time. If you leave between 10AM and 3PM, tickets are just more expensive on the Eurostar.
Where to book the tickets
For the trip from Amsterdam to London there’s only one place where you can book tickets: at Eurostar, the operator. I personally like this, because you don’t need time to compare prices between websites. For the trip from London to Edinburgh this is the case, here you’d have to compare the prices between operators. Transport for Wales is cheapest, so that’s where I booked. There’s one very important criteria when you want to travel cheaply: book early! Bookings open 5 months in advance for the Eurostar. For Transport for Wales this is about 4 months I believe. I just set a reminder in my agenda to book the tickets. I don’t like to pay more, because what you get is always the same. It’s a shame that trains don’t have last-minute sales. In fact, train tickets get more expensive the closer you get to the travel date.
Our experience
I still stand behind our choice to split the trip in half. If you have the time, this is just very relaxed. You get to spend half a day in London, which I personally love. A few years ago I came to the realization that when you travel, it’s really about the trip along the way. It’s not about getting to the destination as fast as possible. I love staring out of the window and enjoying the view. Scotland is beautiful and I’m happy to have seen more of it now that I’ve traveled by train. The facilities in the trains are great, there’s a bar for food, power sockets for charging and Wi-Fi. I personally chose to bring my own food to save waste and money, but it’s great to have options.
Delay on the outbound journey
I do have to be honest here: this trip did not went smoothly due to the operators. On the outbound journey we had a delay of 2 hours. This made out trip from London to Edinburgh last 8 hours. I didn’t mind that much, but if you’re easily irritated by delay this is awful. The good news is that we did get our money back. Transport for Wales offers good compensations, already if you have little delay. For delays over 60 minutes, they give you all your money back. You have to do a claim via their website, that’s easy. Getting the money on my bank account was more difficult, because they sent us a cheque I can’t redeem. After some e-mailing with their customer service, they transferred the money to me. So eventually I paid only 84 euros per person for the outbound journey, very cheap.
Cancellation on the return
On the return the situation was more dire. Our train from Edinburgh to London was cancelled entirely due to personnel strikes. We went to the physical helpdesk from ScotRail. The lady there told us that we could use our ticket on another train to London, by LNER (another operator). We were relieved, because we did not want to miss our train to Amsterdam the next day. Once in the train, our tickets were checked. The person checking our tickets said our tickets were not valid. I explained the situation (and she knew very well there were strikes, it was all over the news), but she said we needed to buy new tickets right there and then. I was furious, but we had not choice but to pay. And like I said, if you book last minute, tickets are extremely expensive. We had to pay 91 pounds per person extra.
Writing this now I still feel very angry. After the whole situation I’ve spend weeks contacting their customers service (also from the operator where we bought the tickets) and the one from ScotRail. All operations keep pointing to each other and refuse to give us any compensation, meaning we paid 143 euros per person in total for one single trip (instead of the 52 euros I booked the ticket for). I bought tickets 4 months in advance and did everything right. This feels like injustice. But after many attempts to get the money back, I have given up.
Extraordinary situation
I like to think that this situation with the strikes was exceptional. That’s okay. But the way it was handled by the personal from ScotRail and LNER was outright scandalous. If you want people to take the train, this is not the way to go at all. I understand that compensation can’t be given easy, but I had all receipts and tickets. Especially the lady who made us pay extra tickets makes me mad. She knew very well that what she was doing was wrong. Anyway. Like I said, I just hope this is extraordinary. I hate to end on a negative note, because the trip itself is beautiful. But I felt like I needed to be honest as well.
Yours sincerely,
Romee