While we were based in Edinburgh for a week, Jane and I visited Glasgow.  It was my first encounter with Scotland’s largest city.  I think the only UK city in the top 10 by size I now have yet to visit is Liverpool and I need to plan for that.  Thanks to holidays with my parents in my youth and my trips to football grounds with Forest Green Rovers, there are only a handful of northern industrial cities in the top 100 UK cities by population that I have yet to go to.  I suspect that Glasgow is a lot more interesting than most of those 😊

We travelled from Edinburgh to Glasgow by train.  It was a very easy journey through the Scottish Lowlands past green fields, spoil heaps (large orange-brown hills, locally called ‘bings’ that are apparently a legacy of the 19th century oil-shale industry) and a brief sighting of the attractive Linlithgow Palace.  The stop at Falkirk High railway station was personally significant since it made sense of a lyric in one of my favourite songs by one of my favourite singer-songwriters who was brought up in Falkirk: Loneliness Shines by Malcolm Middleton. 

I always assumed Falkirk had a railway station but wondered why the word ‘High’ was included without understanding that it was just a part of the station’s name.  It’s a great song from a master of miserabilism.

Anyway, we arrived mid-morning in Glasgow and, since it was raining, took immediate shelter in the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA).  We quickly perused the permanent collection which included a number of works by Eduardo Paolozzi who is also prominent in Edinburgh where he was born (well, just up the road in Leith actually). 

We eschewed the queues to see the Banksy exhibition at GOMA which, in retrospect, was an omission due to limited planning of our Glasgow trip.  Instead, we took a bus tour around the city – something that Jane always loves to do upon arrival in a new city so as to get a feel for it.  It was a good idea even though rain prevented us using the open top part of the bus.  The recorded guide through the headphones provided by the tour operator was very informative and once we had secured a seat on the upper deck and the sun started shining, the tour showed Glasgow off at its best.

We headed to the West End of the city to visit the Botanic Gardens there.  On the way we saw a lot of the River Clyde and the redevelopment of the old port and shipyards.  Indeed, we saw a lot of areas that I’d like to come back to on foot, both in the oldest parts of the city and along the river.  I’m especially keen to spend some time in the Riverside Museum which looked as though it would have some lively exhibits – perhaps we’ll go on tour with First Grandchild when he is a little older.

Unsurprisingly, parts of the West End of Glasgow are reminiscent of the lovely Georgian streets and squares of Edinburgh that were built at the same time.  However, prices of the flats within the three and four storey terraces are significantly lower than in Edinburgh.  That reflects, perhaps, the more fragmented nature of the architecture in Glasgow and the status and cachet of Edinburgh as Scotland’s capital.  I sensed though, that Glasgow is up and coming with a vibrant cultural energy that presumably has increased dramatically since Glasgow became European Capital of Culture in 1990.

After a quick lunch stop, we thoroughly enjoyed the glasshouses in the Botanic Gardens.  These are called the Kibble Palace.  This is because they were designed and built for John Kibble’s own garden but then transported to Glasgow’s botanical gardens in 1873, initially as a concert and exhibition venue and then the temperate glasshouse which it remains today.

We strolled south from the gardens past Glasgow University and the Hunterian Museum (saving it for another day), into some small independent shops on Great Western Road, through Kelvingrove Park and on to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. 

This is an impressive late Victorian building overlooking the park which, like all public Scottish museums and galleries, is free to enter.  That is great because it encourages short as well as longer visits.  Because we wanted to finish our open top bus tour, we restricted ourselves to a short dash around the ground floor and lack of pre-planning on our part meant that a look at the current Mary Quant exhibition will have to wait for another time.

The Kelvingrove contains an eclectic mix of art and history.  There is a room on the Glasgow Boys that Jane was keen to see since she had seen a play recently about them and their rebelliousness against Victorian traditions in painting.  I spent most of my time in a couple of rooms celebrating Charles Rennie Mackintosh, one of Glasgow’s most famous sons. 

Frankly, neither of us invested enough time to do the collections in the Kelvingrove justice but we will visit Glasgow again soon, I’m sure.  This trip was an excellent diversion from our usual walks around the sights of Edinburgh.  Next time, armed with what we now know, we will fill in some of the gaps that deserved more time or that we missed out on last week.