Plank Road: Haste Ye Back

On Monday, we walked to the West End of Glasgow. Glasgow lends itself to easy navigation and it gets even easier as you go west where the streets are not blocked at the ends. The distances are also very short, it took a lot less time to get around than I anticipated.

We started off in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum which is a bit of a jumbled display of some really great objects and artworks. There is a mix of Scottish art, wildlife, inventors, glassware, design and there is also an Egyptian display. The designs of Charles Rennie Macintosh are really interesting and there is a lot of his work in the city. He not only designed buildings but also tea rooms, furniture, glass panels, paintings and decorative art. The interiors of the Glasgow house that Macintosh designed and lived in from 1906 to 1914 are reassembled inside the Huntarian Art Gallery, but we didn’t make it there.

The most interesting display in Kelvingrove was the glassworks, the very finely detailed etched glassware from the 1800's is extraordinary. Other items of glass had intricate swirls of colour.

Glasgow used to be referred to as the ‘workshop of the empire.’ After the American War of Independence, the Tobacco Lords shifted investment into Caribbean sugar and into cotton. This gave rise to the textile trade in Glasgow. These astute Glasgow merchants also exported goods to the colonies so the ships did not go over empty.

In the early 19th century the mining of ore and coal in close proximity to Glasgow resulted in shipbuilding and engineering. The availability of a cheap labour pool of immigrants from the Highlands, Ireland and Europe led to the viability of these heavy industries. In the 1880's, the Clyde led the world in shipbuilding.

There was also social strife as workers toiled in appalling conditions and were poorly paid. The first trade union in Scotland, The Glasgow Weavers’ Society was formed in 1767. In 1787 the Calton Weavers went on strike for 12 weeks for having wages cut to starvation levels. During a demonstration, known as the Calton Weavers Massacre, six men were killed during a riot after militia fired on the demonstrators.

In the 19th Century tenement houses were built, these were blocks of one to two room flats that could be up to four stories high, housing 16 families. As the population of Glasgow grew from 250,000 in 1841 to over one million in 1912, the tenements became severely overcrowded. There is a tenement house to visit in Glasgow, but we never had time to see it.

From the 1870's, competition from America, Germany and Japan put the Glasgow manufacturing industry into decline. Manufacturing had a brief period of renewal because of the two World Wars, but it was the end of the workshop of the empire. It was really too bad to look at some of the beautiful work in glass and textiles in Kelvingrove Museum and then read that these old businesses closed.

After Kelvingrove Museum we walked over to the Botanic Garden, there are large areas of green space in Glasgow. The Botanic Garden also has conservatories full of plants. The West End is home to another shopping area with numerous bars, clubs and restaurants. We went for lunch in the one of the bars in Oran Mor. Oran Mor is a converted church which has two bars and two restaurants. We walked in the door and just went to the first bar we happened in to, lunch was really good, haggis balls and chicken caesar and whisky of the month. The more we eat Scottish food the more addicted we become - we now love black pudding and haggis, believe it.

Then we visited a couple of cheese mongers to buy some Scottish cheese to take home. These shops are wicked, filled with piles of cheese and they give you samples cut off the blocks before you decide what to buy. We can bring a small amount of cheese into Canada, you just have to make the declaration on your customs form.

We walked all day, then went out for dinner and had prawns, scallops and a cheese board that was really great, then it was off to pack as we had to catch the 6:00 a.m. train to Edinburgh on Tuesday. Our flights got all goofed up as BMI stopped flights from London Heathrow to Glasgow, Air Canada booked our return with Continental to New Jersey and we would have none of that. Before we left home on this trip, I changed our flight to leave from Edinburgh so we could fly Edinburgh - London - Toronto - Regina.

It was great walking to the train station in the early hours as there were not many people about. There was a bit of a mist and the light was soft but weighty, you know, how it looks or feels when you are in a blanket of fog. Anyway, as we walked down Buchanan Street from the top of a hill, I couldn’t take my eyes off the line of old buildings receding down the hill, as the soft light gave great effect to the buildings. John, a man on a mission that morning, eager to board the train so we didn’t miss our flight out of Edinburgh was storming ahead and missed the scene.

You have to figure out which train to take as some are commuter type trains that stop everywhere and some are like the train we took and only had a couple of stops prior to Edinburgh. The train was really fast so we got to central Edinburgh in good time and then just caught the bus right outside the train station for the trip to the airport.

Our flights were really good with risky short connection times, but we were lucky with our flights arriving on time. It was a 21-hour day or so and we were up for close to 24 hours before getting home and to bed.

Haste ye back is often written on signs in Scotland after you leave an area, it is in the airport as well. Thanks to those who commented, and to all readers for sharing our travels with us. Haste ye back, next year.

University of Glasgow, Gilbert Scott Building