Introduction
With my parents I went on holiday to Iona. On the way, we stopped off for five days in Glasgow, visiting museums and taking photos and generally doing the tourist thing.
Preston
I had to change trains at Preston to get there, with time to spare even after I ate lunch, and found a couple of interesting things in the station.
Glasgow
We were staying at the Rennie Mackintosh Hotel, which has nothing to do with Rennie Mackintosh (unless you count a few unusual pieces of furniture) and isn't really a hotel (it's a B&B). That aside, it's a perfectly nice place to stay and reasonably convenient.
After dropping our bags, we headed out to walk around the city.
Bridges
It wasn't long before we found our way to the river, which features a perfect embarrassment of riches for bridge fans. Seriously there are way too many bridges. I didn't even take pictures of all of them.
Buildings and warehouses
Glasgow is a pretty great city to visit if you're a Victorian architecture enthusiast. If there's ever a world dome shortage, people will be beating a path to Glasgow; virtually every building has a few. It's like the architects started off designing a mosque and somebody told them halfway through 'hang on, it's an insurance company'. Similarly, most buildings have impressive carving and statues.
Western riverside
Back beside the river we headed west past a major road bridge, at which point we had a pleasant surprise - a bloody huge crane, the only remaining part of what had once been (presumably) a similarly huge shipyard.
A Chinese restaurant up ahead occupied a large round building. I said, 'That looks like a tunnel entrance'. Sure enough, when we looked across the river, we found its twin (and walked across to have a look). The tunnel is disappointingly closed, being replaced by several road bridges and another road tunnel further along.
City streets
Back across the river I spent way too long standing in what is now a large carpark taking pictures of the giant crane. Then we headed north into a slightly run-down looking area which featured a relatively modern church with a giant pyramidal copper roof (but which I didn't take any interesting photos of).
Skylines
Before going to bed, we headed up a road near our hotel to Hill Street, which (at this intersection) had views in three directions.
Day 2
Our plan for the day was to visit the police museum, but we started off by walking around the city centre.
Modern art museum
We briefly looked inside the modern art museum; the exhibition was mildly interesting, but not that special.
Alleys
The city has numerous back alleys, which can be interesting.
Eastward
The museum was a little way east.
The police museum itself is not a major visitor attraction; the guide seemed quite happy to talk to us for a bit. Glasgow had the first police force in the UK, apparently. They also had police boxes, an original one of which was in the museum.
People's Palace
Glasgow Green is a large open space by the river, including a building called the People's Palace (it's a museum of some kind, but we didn't visit it).
Distillery
We crossed the river by a footbridge, which led to what I think was a distillery complex.
Cathedral area
Back across the river, we made our way to the cathedral area. There's a medieval house, which we visited before heading into the cathedral proper.
Necropolis
Near the cathedral there's a large graveyard on a hill where all those wealthy merchants were buried. It's really called the Necropolis.
And on the way back we walked by a police box in blue Tardis livery. (The original ones were actually red.) It wasn't in use, but then again, it hadn't been turned into a coffee kiosk either like several we saw.
Day 3
We went to the University and its Hunterian Museum, which features lots of icky things in jars (and some fun science experiments you can do).
Heading to the riverside later on, we got to see a bridge raised. Disappointingly, this appeared to be for the benefit of a rather crappy-looking cabin cruiser.
Day 4
We headed west from our hotel and visited the Kelvingrove Museums (there's a large art museum, and a smaller transport museum, which has trams and steam engines and such; it's popular with children but not with my dad).
Kelvin Walkway
We walked for a little distance north along the Kelvin Walkway beside the river, which is pleasant enough.
Crossing to the canal
Leaving the river, we headed instead for the Forth and Clyde canal.
The canal
We followed the canal back south into town.
Back to base
Having reached the end of the canal, we returned to the hotel through a picturesque area of the city.
Day 5
Supreme excitement awaited us; we'd found a leaflet advertising tours up a giant crane even bigger than the one in the city. Woo! We went for a bit of a walk in the morning first, though - while Mum sat in a launderette waiting for our clothes to wash. (Yes, really. She volunteered, without asking to take turns or whatever. I still can't believe it. Poor Mum.)
Titan
The big crane is in Clydebank and is called 'Titan'. (Presumably this name only came after it was made a tourist attraction.) It's the biggest crane of its type still standing in Britain, or something like that, and the oldest too. Either way it's pretty damn big, and only slightly spoiled by the lift shaft and emergency stairwell they've added. (I'm a little disappointed they didn't use the original stairs, although that probably wouldn't be too great for disabled access.)
You have to take a shuttle bus from the ticket office across the wasteland-nee-shipyard, which isn't open to the public, then take the lift to the top of the crane. It's rather aggressively fenced in with wire mesh, making it a bit hard to take photos. The floor is also a metal grid. Still, I made an effort.
There was a short film from the 1960s showing on loop in the wheelhouse; a documentary about shipbuilding on the Clyde, it apparently won some kind of Oscar. Only one brief shot of the crane (along with an awful lot of smaller ones which aren't there any more) but interesting nonetheless, particularly because there was absolutely no hint that all these incredible feats of industry and thousands upon thousands of workers were rapidly approaching a steep decline into the scrapheap. (Do we even have scrapyards any more?)
All good things come to an end, so after descending the lift we headed back toward the wonders of Clydebank town - which, to put it politely, is a total hole. Their landmark shopping centre features a pound shop, about three million screaming kids, and unbelievably awful music. I was quite surprised not to find blue anti-junkie lighting in the toilets (if you have to go to that shopping centre regularly, you're going to need to stock up on class As). Anyway, the canal ran through it, so we followed the towpath and got out of there sharpish.
The canal
We were travelling west to the point where the canal joins the Clyde. No particular reason, just because.
Bowling
The canal ends at a swish-looking marina and the requisite tidal lock into the Clyde in a place called Bowling. We did not spot any actual bowling going on; still, cool name.
After that we had a drink in the pub beside the station (the Olympic Games opening ceremony was going on on the pub's TV, but in common with everyone else we ignored it) and got the train back into Charing Cross. The end...
...or not! Because after that first five days we had more holiday in store, albeit of a less crane-filled nature. I'll have pictures and text about our stay on Iona soon, I hope. :)