Well, its officially B Day minus 74, and I've just completed the last organisational bit of the trip - buying my rail ticket home from John O'Groats.

By the kind of mad, twisted logic that will be familiar to anyone who has the misfortune to use our privatised rail services regularly, it's taken me several weeks to be able to buy this ticket, for no other reason than because the rail companies clearly don't want you to plan too far ahead. Perhaps they find planning for the future difficult, or a little threatening or something. Or perhaps they know something we don't and they genuinely can't see themselves surviving any more than a few months into the future (remember GNER?). Anyway....

Of course, when I decided to see if I could get the price of my journey - from Thurso to Newcastle - down out of the rafters a bit, the logic just seemed to keep on twisting. First of all, it really wasn't that easy, because every website I tried seemed to be telling me the ticket was exactly the same price, take it or leave it (...so much for competition, then). However, because my journey was in 3 stages (Thurso to Inverness, Inverness to Edinburgh, and Edinburgh to Newcastle) I decided to see if any parts of that journey might be cheaper if (mad, I know...) bought separately...

And surprise, surprise! It was soon clear that if you bought a ticket for the Edinburgh to Newcastle section, and then a ticket for the Thurso to Edinburgh section, you could save yourself about £15 - because the Edinburgh to Newcastle section actually turned out cheaper. The total cost was about £96, compared to more than £111 when bought as a single through ticket - even though precisely the same trains were being used! Nuts? I think so.

Which brings me to buses (wouldn't you just know it?). If you get on a bus, buy a ticket, travel one stop then get off, and then immediately get back on again and buy another ticket, then get off at the next bus stop and repeat the process, you'll pretty soon run out of money because this is the craziest, most expensive way to travel. The principle here is that, generally speaking, the longer your journey, the cheaper it becomes.

Not so the railways, it seems....