Reading David Gardiner's excellent piece on car-free holidaying last month, together with the trials and tribulations of taking bikes on trains, I found myself even more interested because I was about to try and book a bike onto a train for the first time.

My task was simple, book a one-way journey, leaving just before midday on a Sunday, from Aberdeen to Edinburgh (I was to have ridden the opposite way the day before). And I was to try and do it with Scotrail, a company which has recently won all sorts of awards from Sustrans for being really rather good.

The first attempt was thwarted by a very basic problem - you cannot book bike spaces online. Hundreds of people can be reserved onto seats (each with 14 different fare options) but four bike spaces would appear too much for the system to cope with.

A phone number quickly obtained and it was time for attempt number two. This was more promising; the price on the phone was the same as online, and there were plenty of seats available. The end of the line then said they'd check for a bike space. At this point the plans fell apart again. It turns out that this was GNER train, and while Scotrail could book me onto one of their seats, they couldn't do the same for a bike space.

I was supplied with a number to call GNER instead, and 15 minutes later third time lucky had been proven correct.

It all left me wondering at really how far we have to go before the situation is anything approaching truly integrated. Forget for a moment the plethora of train fares available in this country for the self-same seats, with only four spaces up for grabs on trains, and limited ways in which to book them, irritation levels are quick to rise. This was especially so when an automated voice on the phone told me that if I booked online I could take advantage of an online discount.

Not if I want to take a bike I can't