The summer Scottish sky is never completely dark. Sometime before five the sun escapes and your room is then bathed in light. It is at that moment when I wake but try my best to fall back asleep. Key to doing so is not looking at my phone.

This morning temptation won and I learned that much of National Rail was off grid. Should we stay or should we go? Stay and we avoid a rough travel day (but lose the mega Marriott points needed to book our Liverpool hotel). Also no guarantee the next day will be any easier. So we decided to go.

Four trains and over six hours later we made our way from Stirling to Liverpool. A big shout out to the hardworking National Rail workers who made our trip possible. Besides fixing wires, filling in for sick co-workers and otherwise keeping the system rolling, they also patiently answered a whole bunch of questions from nervous American tourists from Chicago. They are simply awesome.

Liverpool right now is in the low sixties. Yesterday it was in the mid to high nineties. For the friendly clerk who checked us in, someone who knows heat from the year she once spent in Texas, it meant not be able to cool down her eighteen month old child. She said that she had a fan but all it did was blow the hot air around. No one she knows has air conditioning and she was scared for the health of her child.

There is so much to do in Liverpool. We won’t do any of it. And that is what it is to be in the twilight of an epic trip. Tomorrow we ride the rails again to enter a new country in a familiar kingdom.