Josh Sutton takes a family trip to the edge of the world and gets some helpful advice about train times.
Like most children, our two love an adventure. So when I suggested a 1,200-mile round trip to visit aunty Frances on Foula, a two-and-a-half hour ferry ride west of Shetland, Wilf and his sister Ruby immediately started packing.
“It'll be just like in the Katie Morag stories,” they both said, “We're off to see Franny Island.”
I was just as excited. The journey would entail not only planes, trains and automobiles but an overnight ferry ride.
It was the idea of having our own cabin on the 14-hour, Aberdeen to Lerwick crossing which held the most appeal. Or was it the flight over to the island on the tiny six-seater aeroplane? No, come to think of it, it was the fact that I'd be seeing my sister again, whom I'd not set eyes on for more than six months.
Frances moved to Foula a couple of years ago after falling in love with the place following lengthy visits as a geography student. Six years on, Fran now lives on a tiny croft nestled below one of the highest of the five hills on the island.