Then, as in so many walks of life these days, the internet is, or is meant to be, your friend. But you'd be well advised to treat at least some of what you find with a large pinch of salt, as we discovered this week when trying to plan just such a jo
urney.
Having bought a ticket for Caledonian MacBrayne's 'viewing cruise' for the QE2 next Sunday, October 5, and knowing that public transport anywhere on a Sunday morning can be sketchy at best, we set about trying to discover the best way to get to Gourock in time for MV Saturn's departure at 10am.
And according to the journey planner at the government-approved and publicly-run
www.travelinescotland.com, we can leave Rothesay at 8am and arrive in Gourock at a quarter past nine.
Impressive for a Sunday morning, we thought: and then we noticed that the journey planner required us to catch a First bus service at Wemyss Bay at 8.33am, two minutes before the ferry is due to arrive at the pier.
A closer look revealed that that bus connection was only possible because the journey planner thought it only took 25 minutes to cross on the ferry from Rothesay, rather than 35.
Now we know that members of Bute Ferry Users Group, among others, have been keen to press CalMac for a 30-minute crossing time, but even in the era of the streakers, no-one ever considered a 25-minute journey to be even remotely possible.
A swift alteration of our departure times revealed that it wasn't a one-off glitch, and that every Rothesay-Wemyss Bay crossing in the journey planner is, apparently, supposed to take only 25 minutes, though interestingly the return crossing does take 35, as promised in CalMac's own timetables.
Justin Ward, manager of the Traveline Scotland website, told us: "We are a partnership between transport operators, the Scottish Government and local authorities, and data feeds for the site, on the whole, come from local authorities.
"We do get very low numbers of complaints coming through and this mistake could just be down to human error.
"Our apologies for the mistake but I'm very glad you have brought it to our attention. It will be rectified when the planner gets its next weekly update."
CalMac's Bute regional manager, Brian Fulton, said the company had supplied Traveline Scotland with the correct timetable.
Fortunately we know enough about the reliability of online journey planners in general to be aware that we're far better off working things out for ourselves by using each individual company's published timetables.
And it would seem that we're snookered as far as public transport goes: we can get a bus as far as Greenock and get a taxi from there, or catch the train as far as Branchton and walk over the hill at Larkfield past Inverclyde Royal Hospital.
As luck would have it, there's plenty of time available for us to do the latter, though others, making different trips at different times to different places, might not be so lucky: so if you do use online journey planners in general, not just this one, be sure to double check the times you're given!
The correct information, with 35-minute journey times in both directions, appeared on the journey planner on Thursday morning.
