A wee greeting from Glasgow

Glasgow, and the sun shines after a few days of gloom, and what a difference it makes. Glasgow on a cloudy day is still a lovely city, but when the sun comes out it really shines. It was once known as the Second City of the Empire, next to London, and it is pretty easy to see why. Although it dates back almost 1000 years, it is really a Victorian city, as reflected in its beautiful architecture, undoubtedly some of the finest examples we’ve seen.

George Square, the real heart of Glasgow city.

Glasgow built its wealth on the proceeds of tobacco and other raw material trade with the Americas (pre-revolution) and the Caribbean, when they were both British colonies. Unfortunately, a great deal of this wealth was at the expense of slaves and very poorly paid workers. The part of the city in which we stayed, The West End, was where the wealthiest of the wealthy merchants and financiers built themselves magnificent mansions.

This is the Glasgow Cathedral (St Mungo's tomb is here, this place is really old).

I don't know if this is the oldest Cathedral we've visited, but it's certainly one of the most beautiful. Both Alison and I were left speechless.

It's almost enough to make me convert!

We spent the day walking the streets, on buses, and visiting the magnificent Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, a most magnificent Victorian building in its own right. Fortunately, the museum was running an exhibition on Glasgow over the past few centuries, which really helped us to understand where the city had come from and what made it the powerhouse it became.

The Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum - a stunningly beautiful building.

The people of Glasgow, the Glaswegians, are an interesting lot. If the Irish accent can be described as charming, you could only say the local Glasgow accent is more like an accusation – a real roughness to it. I guess that’s because this is how the Glaswegians come across. Tattoos are ubiquitous, spitting in public is a national pastime, as is smoking and swearing, almost everyone has a Number 1 haircut, and you spend much of your time waiting to be head-butted; and the men here are not much better!

The gates to the merchant's section of the city

St Andrew's Square

Make no mistake, the Scots are pretty rugged people, but they have been helpful and generally courteous so far. We are heading further north today, past the famous Loch Lomond, so I would imagine it’s time for us to dust of the kilts. My also be time to sample some of that single malt whiskey these guys are apparently pretty good at making – we’ll see.

Hadrian's Wall

We left Penrith to a very overcast and misty morning, and headed the scenic (and very long) way to Glasgow. This route would take us to see Hadrian’s Wall (yes, I know we’d already seen Adrian’s Wall, this this one is far older). But in order to see it, we first had to cross the impressively rugged Pennines Range. From 6^th gear to fifth, then to fourth, down the third, and quite often second, we kept climbing, and climbing until we were quite literally in the clouds. As a result, we could see nothing, and that included cars coming in the opposite direction. Not too much trouble if your average Pennine road was like those back home in Oz, but these roads were barely built for two sheep traveling abreast (well, they are exceptionally woolly sheep).

The view from the Pennines

Eventually hitting the crest, then down the other side and the fog began to clear to reveal one of the most magnificent, yet barren, landscapes imaginable. Not a single tree in sight, too cold for them to grow. Even the sheep here had beanies and scarfs.

From the Pennines we traveled through beautiful Northumberland, what the English call ‘border country’. I won’t try describing how majestic it was, suffice to say all I could speak to Alison was, “want farm here, want farm here’. It was traveling through here we came across our first grouse, the first of many in fact. A beautiful bird, particularly the male of the species, these birds have been bred for hunting, and they are so big and lazy they can’t even be bothered getting out of the way of oncoming cars (hence the many squashed grouse on the road – I’m not normally partial to road kill, but grouse pie for lunch sounded, well, grouse).

After what seemed forever, we finally arrived at Hadrian’s Wall Information Centre and, you guessed it, the paid car park. A lot of people only walk as far as the wall, take a few snaps and then drive on, but Alison and I decided to walk as far as my ankle would allow us. Now, we are not just talking flat, tourist-friendly paths here. The walk along the wall goes both up and down at what can only be described as precipitous angles. How the Romans managed to build this is beyond my comprehension. The landscape here is unforgiving, and the weather matches it in every way. This is harsh country, and I think walking through it adds to the sensations the wall evokes.

Hadrian's Wall - this part is quite low, but originally most of it was up to six metres high.

The surrounding landscape from the Wall

Some sections of the wall are almost vertical - what a feat of engineering!

 

Don't look over the edge, it is a vertical drop hundreds of feet down.

That's me fighting off the northern tribes (although I look a little like a Roman scarecrow)

Emperor Hadrian had this wall built around the first century AD in order to keep the feral Celtic tribes to north out (he had obviously visited quite a few Glasgow pubs around closing time). The wall is some 80 miles long, and stretches from coast to coast, at pretty much the United Kingdom’s narrowest points. Apparently, the wall employed up to 15,000 men to build, and hundreds more to protect and maintain it once finished. Having walked just a mile or so, we will always remember this special place and have gained a genuine appreciation for these incredible engineers.

The Lakes

We spent today at The Lakes district. I won’t even bother trying to describe it because for some things, words are simply inadequate.

Dumdy, dumdy, dum.......

Oh, alright, but only cause you asked nicely.

We visited two lakes, Ullswater and Windemere, and took a steamboat on Ullswater (although it should have been called a diesboat as the only steam to be found was out of my ears when we found we had to pay for parking while on the boat). Actually, you pay for parking absolutely everywhere in the UK – while walking along a street we stopped to look in a shop window and someone stung me for a pound (just joking, but only just).

Ullswater Lake - all of the lakes are long and thin, they are glacial lakes.

The lake was as beautiful as the weather bleak, but it really didn’t matter, as the view in every direction was beyond description. After leaving the Ullswater Lake, we drove up one of the steepest and narrowest roads I’ve ever seen to a point called Kirkstone Pass, which is so rugged, it looks like it belonged on the set of Lord of the Rings. Unfortunately, we were completely surrounded by mist and fog (and that was inside the car), so any photography was out of the question.

This is NOT Kirkstone Pass (as we couldn't even see the road ahead), but a nice view nonetheless.

On our way to Ullswater, we stopped at the Aira Force, from the Viking word Fors, which means running water (the Vikings were very big on plumbing, apparently). On the walk to the falls, we passed through a pinetum, which is a plantation of a number of different pinus trees planted by the Duke of Norfolk. Boy, were they tall.

Part of Aira Force

The falls themselves were really beautiful, and the countryside quite majestic. At one stage I could have sworn I saw Robin Hood and his band of merry men, but Alison assured me it was just a bunch of German bushwalkers (although one did look a lot like Friar Tuck).

We discovered this wall on our walk to the falls. We called it Adrian's Wall. No, not that other famous wall around here, Hadrian's Wall - this wall was built by the local sheep farmer, Adrian, to keep bloody tourists like us out.

 

Beautiful Lake Windemere

They're very big on stone fencing here - and they never need re-straining!

We are now one-third of the way into our Grand Tour, and it’s only in the last day or so that I’ve come to terms with being away; prior to this I would have happily returned home. It wasn’t that we weren’t having a great time, we were, it is simply that it takes some time to get used to life on the go all the time. And, to be honest, I was missing home. Now that we’ve become acclimatized to the traveling life, I think it inevitable that fairly soon thoughts will turn to life post-trip. In other words, we now find ourselves with the opposite dilemma – how does life in Wangaratta, Victoria ever hope to compare with what we’ve seen and done. I guess we’ve got another six weeks to contemplate that one.

So ferry, cross the Mersey, cause this town's the place I love......

We encountered our first wet weather of the trip yesterday, which saw us in Liverpool. Liverpool is a really large city divided by the famous Mersey River (which we took the ferry across), but it is probably best known as being the home of the Fab Four (that’s the Beatles, for anyone who’s spent the last fifty years on another planet). Beatles memorabilia and exhibitions feature everywhere, but there really is much more to Liverpool than a famous band. Liverpool’s port area is great, in fact, Liverpool has an association with ship building and docks which goes back hundreds of years. 

The Albert Docks, Liverpool

Although the Titanic was actually constructed at Belfast, Liverpool provided many of the crewmen and much of Titanic’s running gear. White Star Line, the owners of Titanic, had its headquarters in Liverpool and in fact Titanic, Carpathia, and Californian were all Liverpool registered ships. There is a really interesting maritime museum that brings the city’s colourful connection with the sea to life.

These two buildings are part of The Three Graces - the one closest is Cunard Lines head office

It was only thirty or so years ago that Liverpool was a derelict and run down city. We met an African chap who had lived in Liverpool some years ago who told us when he first arrived by boat, he didn’t even want to get off, such was the dilapidated state of the city. However, Liverpool revived itself, and today it is a beautiful and bustling centre. 

Although the rain made it difficult for us to see many things, we did manage a 90-minute bus trip, which we really love doing in the larger cities (and a double-decker bus at that). In the evening, we took the train back in and caught some more stand-up comedy, which was really quite entertaining. 

We finished off our two nights in Liverpool with a stroll along the Hoylake promenade this morning, which faces the Irish Sea. It’s pretty much your quintessential English beach, almost no sand to sit on, a pretty stiff gale, and not a bikini in sight (definitely too cold for any white pointers).

Taken from the promenade at Hoylake looking to the Irish Sea. They really take their renewables much more seriously than we do (come to think of it, who doesn't)

Watch out Bondi, this could just be the next must do destination in beaches.

After we left Liverpool, it was off to one area of England we had been really looking forward to, Cumbria and the Lakes, and so far we’ve certainly not been disappointed. What a lovely area, and what a charming town we are staying at, Penrith. Penrith is old, really old! 

This is really old - no, not Alison, the buildings!

There has been a town at Penrith since at least the early thirteenth century, and there is a lot of evidence that the Romans were in the area a thousand years before that (makes Chiltern look positively modern). The town itself reminds me of Bath, in that every building looks pretty much original. There is so much charm, they could just about line the streets with it (not to be confused with the dog poo, which they also seem to have lined the streets with).

A lovely little church with some ridiculously old headstones (early 1700s for some).

The City Hall

Quaint, ain't it!

Tomorrow, it is off to the Lakes for the day. We are going to do a trip on a boat and may even get some bushwalking in, ankle permitting. We passed a shop in Penrith on the way back from the pub which sells hunting and fishing gear, and all the tweed hats, jackets, trousers and plus-fours to go with it. I am tempted to buy some, just so I can wear it down Reid Street when I get back. I guess you can look like the landed gentry, even if you can’t actually afford to be. Although, Edwin and Alison, Lord and Lady of Glenmaree Estate does have a certain ring to it.