Win over GNER!

Travelling home from Iceland to Shetland this summer involved a long and slightly convoluted journey. Þórhallur and I took Árni's car to the bus station in Reykjavík, where I caught a bus to airport at Keflavik, and from there I took a very comfortable flight down to Glasgow with Iceland Air. I went through to Edinburgh by first taking a bus to central Glasgow and then a train to Waverley Station. I needed to swing past a friend's place to drop off luggage, so I took a taxi to his house.

After a pleasing al fresco lunch with Nick I began my journey north to Aberdeen to catch the 7pm ferry to Shetland. I took a taxi to Waverley to get a train. Up until now, everything had gone perfectly according to plan - no delays. But GNER let me down royally. The train was late in arriving at Edinburgh and continued to experience further delays all the way up the NE coast, such that we arrived in Aberdeen some 90 minutes late - and only 10 minutes after the ferry to Shetland had departed. (We pleaded with Northlink to wait for us, but they wouldn't budge!)

GNER put us (myself and lady going home for a funeral) up at a hotel in Dyce so that we could fly home the following morning. They met the hotel expense, but wouldn't book us on flights - we were told to do that ourselves and present a claim to GNER. We did this (thanks to a free wireless connection in my hotel room, I was able to book us flights online for 6am the following morning). The flights were a reasonable £145 return. I filled out the complaint form, wrote a long letter, included my receipts and waited patiently.

GNER have just reimbursed me this very week, some two months later. Hence the celebration! To mark the occasion, I'm going to swing down past Princes Street and do a little autumn wardrobe shopping this afternoon! I should also point out that GNER were kind enough to give me a compensatory £8 voucher for use on their services in the future. How nice!