Strathclyde Country Park Caravan Club Site, Bothwell, Glasgow

We cursed the Scottish weather on and off all day, even forewarned as we were to expect more rain. We caught the train into the city a little later than previous days, this one the train through from Edinburgh, then spent the first hour or so attending to errands in the city, including dealings with O2 who I admit are much easier to deal with than Vodafone.

By the time we arrived at the Hunterian Art Gallery up in the Glasgow University, having caught the underground from St Enochs through to Hillsend, the morning was well on. Like the nearby Hunterian Museum, this houses bequested items once belonging to the celebrated ex-student William Hunter (1718 – 1783), a pathologist and anatomist, a lecturer and contributor to the Scottish Enlightenment of the late 18^th century, whose biography I read last year. 

The gallery is best known for its large collection of work by James Abbott McNeill Whistler, second only to that in Washington DC. There are also works by the Glasgow Boys and Scottish Colourists, referred to a few days ago, and an array of other artworks, some appreciated by us, and some not.

It was still raining when we completed our visit here, however we decided to brave the elements and walk down to the Riverside Museum beside the Clyde. En route we crossed a section of the Kelvin River where there are a series of small waterfalls, a pleasantly surprising feature in the middle of the city. 

The Riverside Museum is really excellent, a transport and maritime museum even superior to that in Hull whose praises we sang after visiting. 

It was designed by the late and famed Zaha Hadid, only opened back in 2011, and two years later awarded European Museum of the Year. In 2015, records show it was visited by almost 1.2 million, making it the fifth most popular attraction in Scotland and today it was packed out by visitors; a good mix of locals and tourists.

Berthed beside this impressive structure, a wave like titanium-clad building, is “The Tall Ship” a square rigger called “Glendee”, a 245 foot long three-masted barque launched on the river back in 1896. This is a rather quiet retirement for a vessel having circumnavigated the globe four times before being out to use for sail training. Today however we left the “Glendee” to the rain lovers, satisfied with viewing her from the dry interior of the upstairs museum gallery.

Within the museum there are buses, motorbikes, carriages, cars galore, prams, ships, and everything else you can connect with movement, and while these sort of places are more Chris’s cup of tea, I enjoyed the little stories attached to most of the exhibitions.

Satisfied that we had given the museum our best given the limitations of one afternoon, we asked the girl at the information desk for directions to the Partick underground station and she sent us out into the now heavy rain confident of soon reaching our destination. Her directions were poor and the signage even more so; we found ourselves wandering along a wide road with only a petrol station to call into for further directions. We were given advice suitable for a car based traveller, but saved from further disaster by a truck driver who knew about the tunnel under the “motorway”. We walked and walked through the puddles and soft verges of the road, finally arriving in Partick but still without clear signage, until we spoke to a school boy who gave us clear directions to the interchange. Here we caught the subway back to St Enochs, then walked through more rain to Glasgow Central, catching a very busy late afternoon train back to Bellshill. 

 

Since arriving home, the heavy rain has been replaced with good old Scots mist but we are still whinging about the poor weather.