hello guys from the building site also known as aberdeen railway station where tonight
i'm going to be taking the caledonian sleeper all the way down to london euston with an expected
arrival time of about 07:45 tomorrow morning should be a good run this and we have got
a club compartment if that's what you call it and we're going to check out the lounge car as
well so why don't you come with us for this trip and i will see you on the train cheers for now
the caledonian sleeper leaves aberdeen at 21:43 every night of the week excluding saturdays and
it joins up with two other trains from inverness and fort william in edinburgh at some ungodly time
in the morning to form one very long train which then carries on towards london euston this service
is known as the highlander there is another sleeper service between london and glasgow or
edinburgh which you will not be surprised to learn is called the lowlander anyway our train tonight
would consist of one seated carriage at the rear the lounge car and then two sleeper coaches
for this section of the route we're hauled by a class 73 diesel locomotive which is then replaced
in edinburgh for a class 92 electric locomotive for the run down the west coast mainline
okay so let's get on board we're in coach c tonight where as i said we will be sharing
a club class cabin where the main advantage is that you get an ensuite shower and toilet
plus breakfast in the morning i'll go through the different types of accommodation available
on this service in a short while but let's make our way down this quite narrow corridor
we'll find our cabin and we'll go and see what it's got to offer shall we
okay then guys so let's have a look around the cabin and this is what you would expect on the
club class cabin which is what caledonian sleeper call it anyway so first of all let's have a look
at the lower bunk we have got the controls here a usb port heating controls individual reading light
there that dims the cabin lights and that switches lights on or off
caledonian sleeper also provide a couple of bottles of water there and yeah just a couple of
pillows on each bunk and same for the top bunk as well and when you get into the cabin you will see
what they provide here which is safety information for the train an accommodation guide which um
i won't talk through all that now the breakfast menu drinks menu and what time you want breakfast
and where you want it um they will serve you breakfast either in the cabin or in the lounge car
what does this say it's like a sleeper kit that is and they also provide
some shampoo conditioner kind of stuff for the shower which we will have a look at in a minute
the bottom of the bunk we have a window light which is that thing there fair enough
double usb and double conventional power sockets and also a call button for the host which you may
need to use if you have any issues and moving on to the sink and uh yeah we have a push button tap
which works fine doesn't it hot and cold water is controlled down here and then yeah they leave the
card for the door just in the sink there along with a pencil which you can use for filling in
all that stuff a little while later okay well that's finished now underneath the sink and we
have a litter bin and some towels um just moving on to this side and we have a couple of coat
hangers um with coat hooks and there are also coat hooks on the other side of the toilet door you can
just see that there moving into the toilet or as they like to call it here the ensuite and you have
a little light that controls the ensuite toilet well i say toilet as you can see
here the toilet is actually underneath this cover and there's the toilet roll as well there
the reason there is a cover here is because you also have a shower you can see the shower head
there just behind the door hot and cold water is controlled here and then obviously when you
do have a shower you need to keep this cover closed and then obviously the water goes along
here and then it drains away and caledonian sleeper also provide towels for the showering experience which
you may be delighted to hear i will be trying out in the morning so yes i guess you cannot
contain yourselves guys to wait for that um in a short while a very short while in fact
we're going to be heading off to the lounge car so we're going to check that out and
let's see what they've got um on offer right so the door by the way is
locked or unlocked with the key card and you can see it going red there which obviously means it's
locked we took our breakfast order form with us so we could fill it out whilst we had a drink
and then handed it in at the same time anyway here's the club car so let's go in and
there's not many people in here so yeah let's join the party anyway now the lounge car is laid out
with various different forms of table seating on the right here and along the left you have
a kind of bar stool arrangement which looks a little less comfortable in my opinion as you
can see we were spoilt for choice tonight so decided upon one of the table seats okay guys
so we're we're in the lounge car um haven't actually left aberdeen yet um but yeah this is
this is great um now i had a look at the somebody recommended to me that i should try the what is it
yeah the highland park unfortunately that's not available on the train tonight but there
are plenty of others i know absolutely nothing about whiskey now i don't even like it really much
to be honest but yeah it seems to be a bit of a tradition whenever i travel on the
caledonian sleeper i'll try some whiskey and so the very nice
member of staff in the lounge car by the way um recommended one or two and i've gone for this
one which is a balachin a 10 year old single malt with a soft rounded and sweet star sweet
start with cinnamon chocolate and lime leading to burning hay you can tell i'm reading this can't you
a grassy peat smoked finish citrus peel dark chocolate licorice and a lingering earthiness
so i'm going to try that in a bit why don't you join me here for the tasting session
we'll see how we go okay so um yeah let's let's have a try of this
it's like an unboxing session isn't it yeah here it is far too much for me to
manage but anyway let's um
a little bit it says on ice as you would expect and there is nothing else added to it
i'm just going to pour it all in
like i said i'm not a a lover of whiskey but things might change
it might be absolutely absolutely fantastic
that's not actually ooh that's not actually too bad i'm not used to i'm not used to whiskey much but
yeah it's all right actually i i can see myself actually finishing this class so yeah ballechin
it's got my seal of approval cheers
okay so we'd already eaten tonight so only opted for a quick drink
there was quite an extensive menu on offer though with starters such as soup
smoked salmon and venison to classic mains like haggis neeps and tatties now there's also an
extensive wine list plus other beverages if whiskey isn't your thing now it's also good
to see that the vegetarian options had improved since our last trip on the old sleeper service
tell you what the non-meat options are better than they were the time we went on the old style sleeper
Oh the one to Fort William?
yeah um that time the only vegetarian option was some kind of vegetable tagine which was just
some vegan tomato sauce you've got a macaroni cheese and then you've got chilli for vegans so
yeah that's good and it's only it's only mac and cheese isn't it but at least it's another option
Yeh
talking about options yeah i wanted to say earlier that the caledonian sleeper offers four choices
of accommodation now the cheapest cabins are the classic which is a two bunk bed offering
and then the most expensive option if you can afford it
is the very nice caledonian double and in between those two options
is the club room which is similar to the classic but you have the ensuite facilities
of course you do have the option of a seat which i must say i would
really struggle with these days to be honest but it is pretty affordable if you can manage it
i was intrigued by the seats so i had a bit of a wander in to see what they were like
i found the cabin quite bright to be honest though the seats looked comfortable they don't really
recline much but i guess if you can sleep sitting up like some of these guys then you'd be all right
have you ever spent a night in seated accommodation? believe me i did my
time in these a long time ago but i'd love to hear your experiences in the comments below
now when i was booking this i found that prices fluctuated quite a lot
so it was difficult to pin down an exact cost for each option
as a guide though i would expect to pay around £55 for the seat
anything between £100 and £200 ish for the classic and club rooms and around about £400
for the double if you can get them cheaper than that then yeah i think you've done pretty well
i had a quick check of the wi-fi which worked but only well enough to perform basic
tasks and as a general rule if it struggles to load up pictures on social media then
it's probably not worth bothering with in my opinion
i'm going to do a review of the accessible toilet on this train for the benefit of those that don't
have an ensuite manual locking of the door with audible confirmation
and then we've got a big mirror above a round sink with water and soap provided
by the plan b placement of a bottle of liquid soap
the hand dryer was strong enough to almost blow the toilet roll over
and to the left you have a litter bin sanitary bags and above the toilet
the drop down baby changing facilities for particularly massive babies i thought
now remember not to leave them behind by the way when you go
drop down rail here and emergency call points at
both floor level and on the sidewall as you would expect
a couple of coat hooks and yeah all in all clean tidy and a
perfectly functional toilet no issues found
and with that it was time to go back to the room and try and get a few hours sleep
okay guys so um back in the room i'm on the top bunk tonight
and yeah it was pretty good really the lounge car was really quiet um had a couple of drinks there
staff great really friendly exactly what you want attentive absolutely fantastic had a great
time so far let's hope i can get some sleep and i will see you in the morning good night for now
okay guys good morning from the caledonian sleeper just somewhere south of coventry
i think we are at the moment and we're gonna just do a bit of um
looking out of the window i think let's turn the camera this way and oh by the way um
this table here is which is really handy i forgot to mention it last night but um
yeah it's very useful for storing stuff on i think you can fold it around
and yeah just push that up there trying to hold the camera and then just fold it away
which is great let's have a look then and see where we are this morning in a field
now then i think that's probably the m1 motorway over there and the sun's coming up
it looks like it's gonna be a beautiful day actually so yeah great all good um
i think uh overall yeah not a bad cabin not sure how much sleep i got last night
to be honest but you know what it really helps having a shower
in the room because that was quite nice this morning and it was actually warm which
was great and so what we're gonna do now is we're just gonna head down to the lounge car where we're
gonna have our breakfast i'll show you a little bit of that and then we'll probably be um not far
from the outskirts of london and so i'll speak to you again once we get off the train
yeah we could have had breakfast in the room but i think that would have been a bit cramped to be
honest and it seemed like most people felt the same as the lounge car was really busy
and we had to sit on the uncomfortable stools along the one side the quality and quantity
of the food though was really good as you can see here
it was about quarter to seven in the morning and we still had about an hour to run until london it quietened
down in the lounge car and we spent the rest of the journey just relaxing and
looking out the window onto what was becoming a really beautiful morning
okay guys and that was the caledonian sleeper from aberdeen all the way down to london euston we've
got in i think we've arrived a few minutes ahead of schedule which is great isn't it as
you see when we left aberdeen there were only about four coaches on it and obviously the um
the highland service from places such as inverness they've joined the train and we've all come down
as one so to speak anyway yeah i enjoyed it it was a comfortable ride not sure how much
sleep i got but you know that's down to myself being a light sleeper more than anything else
but it was good staff were friendly reasonably quiet although this morning the lounge car was quite busy
um but yeah overall um can't really fault it had a great shower this morning it was nice
and warm so yeah everything worked pretty much so i would definitely use it again
thanks for watching i'll catch you on another adventure soon and as always guys cheers for now