Strathclyde Country Park Caravan Club Site, Bothwell, Glasgow

This morning we paid for two more days here in Bothwell, having decided to do part of our exploration of Ayrshire from here. In fact we have started to consider the weeks ahead, already eyeing up our departure date still just short of two months. However the plans are still in the making and we are, as of tonight, still no further beyond next Monday morning.

This afternoon we learned that Rough Guide readers have just awarded Scotland most the beautiful country award; obviously the voters travelled the country in weather that  enabled clear views. This is a line that my fellow traveller frequently uses when summarising our own travel about Scotland; I am a little more positive. I have loved this country so far, although I would have done so even more without the midges and with a little less rain.

But rain has to be accepted as part of the deal here, and it was in rain we spent yet another day exploring Glasgow. This morning we travelled into the city from Bellshill on the train, a mere twenty minutes of hassle free commute. We arrived in plenty of time to make our way to the City Chambers where we took a free tour about the opulant rooms, up the marble stairway which is reputedly the largest in Western Europe, wandering about rooms beneath ornate vaulted ceilings and domes fashioned with more than 1.5 million tiles laid by hand. Epitomising the aspirations and optimism of the late Victorian city elders, the building was completed in 1888. One of our fellow tourists, a once-upon-a-time Glaswegian now resident in Canada described the interior as “OTT”; despite her maturity, she is more with-it on the lingo than I. It was she too who shared our difficulty in understanding the lovely guide who glowed with pride in her work place but whose regional grammar and poor enunciation coupled with her strong accent left us catching about 80% of the information imparted. I have no idea how the Dutch and German folk got on, however the tour was well taking even for the visuals alone.

Emerging onto George Square, we found our way through the city to Glasgow Green and the People’s Palace. I should mention here that we had found the streets very dirty and uneven yesterday, and this was compounded today by the surface water everywhere. The journey to the city’s own museum was not particularly enjoyable, so we were glad to arrive and settle down in the Winter Garden with our lunch, peeling off the wettest over garments.

The Green is reputedly the oldest park in Britain, although I have a feeling I have written that before. It certainly has been common land since at least 1480, when it was first mentioned in records. There are apparently many sculptures dotted about the park, however we did not see them; we were more intent on tracing our footfall along the wet pavements, dodging the deep puddles and litter, the pockmark of chewing gum impossible to avoid.

The People’s Palace and attached Winter Gardens were opened in 1898 by the Earl of Roseberry, the building a cultural centre for the people of the East End at a time when this was one of the most unhealthy and overcrowded parts of the city. The museum is a squat red-stone Victorian building with a vast semi-circular glasshouse tacked on the back, today leaking like a sieve. Originally the building was divided into reading and recreation rooms on the ground floor, a museum on the first floor and an art gallery on the top. Concerts were held in the Winter Gardens, however since 1940, this has been Glasgow’s local history museum, and is an excellent one at that.

By the 1800s Glasgow had become the Second City of the British Empire, with a burgeoning population, increasing at such an alarming rate that housing became a desperate problem. Despite the tenement housing that was constructed in the late 19^th and early 20^th century, some of which were demolished in the middle of last century and replaced with multi-story residential complexes, not too different from those that have been failing their fire safety checks over the past few months throughout England, housing is still an on-going problem. But then that problem seems to be echoed right through the western world these days, including in our own paradise DownUnder. 

In the 1990s over 30% of Glaswegians lived below the official poverty line. In 1965 38% of houses in Glasgow had no fixed toilet or shower, and even by 1985 5% of households still didn’t have a bath or shower. These random facts gleaned in the museum from the excellent exhibition all about Glasgow Housing serve to demonstrate the backward nature of this city, which in so many other ways has been at the forefront of modern civiliation. For example Glasgow opened its subway in 1896, making it the world’s third oldest.

After a couple of hours in the museum, we set off back up into the city, along Trongate Street which was apparently once a fine part of the city, but the more south eastern parts today were anything but. Examining a map in the middle of the pavement, I found myself ankle deep in floodwater. We retreated into St Enoch’s Shopping Centre and walked up and down admiring the fine merchandise and fashion in the shop windows, before deciding to make our way to the Central Station and head for home even though the hour was not yet late.

Back at camp we found the replacement television remote had arrived and we marvelled at on-line purchases, a practice we have yet to generally adopt. Perhaps if we were not so transient, we might be tempted to join the rest of the world and their on-line consumption.