Strathclyde Country Park Caravan Club Site, Bothwell, Glasgow

Today we could so easily have decided to stay indoors, reading and looking forward to a pot of hot soup for lunch, but we would have been hugely disappointed later in the day when the rain stopped and the sun appeared albeit for a few hours. Instead we bit the bullet and headed once more to the railway station at Bellshill, today buying “Roundabout Glasgow” tickets which allowed us to travel freely on the rail and underground within certain boundaries for £6.80 each.

Arriving at Glasgow Central, we made our way the short distance along the street to catch the funny little underground circle at St Enoch. The  two opposing routes, the inner and outer, allow access to fifteen points about the city, in a bright noisy little coccoon, or capsule, reminding me of futuristic machines seen in old sci-fi movies. I did say yesterday that Glasgow has one of the oldest underground systems in the world, and while it is certainly using trains updated from its first operations, I suspect there has been little done since it was first opened. But for all that, this strange little caterpillar delivered us safely to the Kelvinhall Station from where we were easily able to access the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.

This is yet another of the grand edifices of Glasgow city, brash yet quite wonderful, but all so much in contrast with the sight of so many homeless attempting to claim the streets for themselves.

Back in 1888, the Glasgow International Exhibition, housed in a temporary but ostentatious brick and steel structure in the adjacent park was a chance to show off Victorian Glasgow’s success to the world. Thousands of objects were purchased from the exhibition and the profits were used, together with donations from the city’s wealthy industrialists, to fund the more permanent building of the red sandstone Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. Further exhibitions were held in 1901, when the gallery was opened, then again in 1911 and in 1938.

Walking from the subway to the gallery, one has good views of the turreted tower of Glasgow University, and just across the road is the grand Kelvin Hall, recently renovated and now apparently a “cultural and sports venue” athough it does not look at all appropriate for such use.

But aside from comments about these architectural wonders, the art gallery and museum is absolutely wonderful and deserved more than the four and a half hours we gave it. However our time was broken up a little, first by just over an hour with volunteer guide Chris, a retired primary school teacher who had returned to the city of her upbringing after decades of absence, thrilled to be able to offer something back and passionate about this treasure trove. After an excellent overview of the gallery, having trekked from one end of the expanse to the other, we found a little spot under one of the stairways set aside for those with “packed lunches”; they obviously knew we were coming. After a short exploration of one of the art galleries, we sat in one of the massive halls and were treated to an organ recital by Simon Nieminski for half an hour. Cameras were set up so we could watch his hands and feet on the keyboards,  to be amazed at his dexterity and co-ordination, apart from appreciating the lovely strains of sonatas, reveries and hymns.

Kelvingrove has a magnificent organ, built in 1901 by Lewis & Co of London, installed in its position on the second floor high above the Centre Hall in 1902. Recitals are held daily, free to the public as is entry to the galleries.

The art gallery had been our original point of interest and we were duly rewarded. There is a large exhibition of work by the “Glasgow Boys”, a loose-knit group of about twenty British artists at the end of the 19^th century. In the 1890s their work was widely admired in Europe and America, where they were regularly invited to exhibit, putting Glasgow on the cultural map thus encouraging following generations of Scottish artists to have confidence in their own abilities and experimentation. And follow they did, the Scottish Colourists between 1900 and 1930; Ferguson, Peploe, Hunter and Cadell, whose work was also well represented here in the gallery.

Another surprise in the art department was the space reserved for Salvador Dali’s Christ of St John of the Cross, currently out on loan to a gallery in Europe. There was a good supporting exhibition about this work, the artist and how the gallery came to own such a work, and even better still, the copyright, which means that if you have ever bought a print, postcard or teatowel using this painting, you will have been making a small contribution to the upkeep of this gallery in Glasgow, justification for the action of the director who made the purchase in the 1950s to the dismay of the city’s ratepayers.

Of course there was so much to see and take in here, not least further on the growth and development of industrial Glasgow, and a small display attempting to convince the visitor that Glasgow is in the process of re-inventing itself from the decline and decay suffered in the post-war economic downturn in shipbuilding and heavy engineering. In the 1980s a strategy was adopted to re-brand the city and use the arts, culture and sport as the catalysts for investment and urban regeneration; let us say this is a work in progress.

Have I mentioned that last year  Scotland’s economy suffered a deficit of almost £15 million; this for a country who recently held a referendum to free itself from the purse strings of Great Britain? Need I say more?

Not only did we leave the gallery wanting to return for more, always an excellent sentiment, but the sun was shining and further rain was some hours away. It had been an excellent day.