Part 1 of the Scotland Tour

As previously mentioned, since completing and arriving home from my American tour on 29th July, much of my attention has been focused on rescuing the Scotland tour which was due to start on Friday 14th August. The Boat and Bike company, to be fair to them, have been very supportive since they cancelled our tour which was due to start on 16th August and finish on 23rd August.

Luckily I was able to find a fantastic Airbnb property In Milngavie (pronounced Milne Guy) which could accommodate the 16 people who had not withdrawn from the tour. Everything seemed to come together for us at this property, although only a few made use of the hot tub and extensive gardens. It was less than 5 minutes from the train station and a similar distance to the nearest supermarket, the local shops provided a good spread of services but the nearest were a series of bakeries - not a bad thing! The high street also provided an ample supply of takeaways, restaurants and pubs and provided easy access to the West Highland Way. That said, the well known Scottish restaurant, MacDonalds, had no trade from our group!

However, before all of this took place, we firstly had to assemble everyone together, take a bus tour around Glasgow, pick up our hire vehicles and see all the statues with traffic cones on people’s heads - a very Glaswegian thing!!

In order to welcome people to the hotel which would be our home in the city centre for a couple of nights, I intentionally arrived a day early to make sure I would there with some time to spare. Little did I know that everyone else seemed to have the same plan as me and I found myself being welcomed to the hotel instead! By Thursday night on 13th August most people had arrived and started their own Scotland adventure. Only a few people actually arrived on Friday 14th - so much for planning to be ahead!!

One of the first things we found out was that Glasgow was hosting the World Piping Competition on Glasgow Green, one of the many parks, over our first weekend. Piping bands from all over the world were competing, including teams from the USA, Australia and Bermuda, as well as the UK. Kilts and bagpipes were everywhere along with some very enthusiastic audiences. What was so good to see was the number of youngsters involved with twirling batons, drum sticks and bagpipes. There were training areas as well as competition arenas dotted around the park. Quite a few of us went to the park to evidence all the enthusiasm for an instrument that can sound like a straggled cat at times!! Somehow when you assemble people into a pipe band, the sound is transformed into something far more melodic and stirring!

On the Saturday morning everyone climbed on the open topped bus for a tour of the city where everyone was able to hop on or hop off to explore the enormous variety of buildings to visit. It was an open opportunity to really see the city for the first time. The cathedral, the universities, the free museums, bridges along the Clyde and not forgetting distilleries to taste the local ‘water’! Whiskey is one of the top exports to the world from Scotland and there are plenty of distilleries to meet this demand! What we learnt is that most distilleries have a series of different blends to cater for all the individual palates. There was one whiskey at the Clydesdale distillery that was matured in sherry casks that I really enjoyed, whilst there were others that did not appeal so much.

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One of the other bursts of interest in Glasgow was to find the loads of painted Scottish Terriers all around the city which were later removed and sold for charity. Here are just a few:

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Having been to Glasgow a few times I was much more impressed by the city than previously and having recently hosted the Commonwealth Games, there seemed to be positive vibes amongst the locals and the city. Having said this, I did experience a rather awkward moment when a gang of men were demanding a local convenience store shopkeeper to empty the till and give them the money. That was before the police arrived and chased the protagonists away from the shop. “Nothing like a bit of excitement and variety when visiting a city! Eh?!”