How to get to Linlithgow? There are four train operating companies running between Newcastle and Edinburgh: LNER, TransPennine Express, CrossCountry and Lumo. This means that fares are very competitive and on Thursday 7th April I went to Edinburgh for £7.35 each way with my railcard.
Then onward to Linlithgow, the ending pronounced as in low rather than how. It’s a compact town and my list of places to visit was simple: Palace, Church, Loch, Museum and Canal Basin. All are close together, although the natural loch is quite large and if you want to walk round the perimeter it is a pleasant 2.3 mile stroll.
Whilst I left Chester-le-Street on time, my train for the main leg of the journey, TransPennine’s 09:19 train from Newcastle to Edinburgh, had been cancelled. A quick visit to the ticket office had me reserved on the 0947 non-stop LNER service to Edinburgh, which arrived on platform 9 on time where my connection to Linlithgow was fortuitously waiting on adjacent platform 8. Accordingly I arrived at my destination at the originally scheduled time of 1133.
The subway between platforms of this station is very low. I am not tall at 5ft 11ins but there was only an inch clearance above my head. First stop was the Post Office to dispatch one of my railway maps (www.railmap.org.uk). It was actually going to Oxfordshire, but with prices having gone up, I felt I was getting better value for money for my £6.95 sending it from Scotland.
Then time for a cup of coffee at the Cafe 1807 (named after the fountain completed in that year outside the cafe), and a visit to the welcoming and fascinating Museum inside the 1939 Court House and Administration building of the County of Linlithgowshire, which provided a useful orientation to the town, It is now part of West Lothian managed from the new town of Livingston.
The attractive building was opened in 1939, and the museum comprises three rooms, admission free but donations welcome. It is now named after Tam Dalyell, the local MP who holds the record for the most suspensions in the House of Commons.
The railway station at Linlithgow may be the earliest station to be photographed anywhere in the world. There’s a picture dating from 1845, and the railway line slices through the south of the town on its way from Glasgow to Edinburgh.
In 1822 the canal, further south and at a higher level, also passed east west and was called the Union Canal with a canal basin constructed to allow goods to be loaded and unloaded.
Lunch was in the Star and Garter pub, including some haggis, before I walked up to St. Michael‘s church and found the adjacent Palace closed for high level renovations. The town motto is “St. Michael is kind to strangers”. As an ancient town, Linlithgow is not immune from controversy: not everyone likes the aluminium superstructure built on the church tower (although I did).
The high street is an eclectic mix of different period buildings with a large 1970s brutalist concrete development, the Vennel, where the loch reaches closest to the town. Most recently, though, controversy has raged about a pub named after the Black Bitch, see the statue photographed, celebrated for swimming across the loch daily to bring sustenance to her master who was marooned and chained on an island. Echoes of Greyfriars Bobby in Edinburgh (where you can break your journey). The Black Bitch pub has been renamed this year as the Willow Tree.
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