30. Carlisle

Dalston Hall, Carlisle
Private site
June 1^st - 3^rd

What a lovely site, run by the most relaxed old bloke in the world. He had sounded great when I spoke to him on the phone, asking my name but not asking for a deposit. When I arrived he shook hands and we had a great old chinwag. He seems to run the little golf course here as well. It's expensive at £20, being a private site, but beautifully laid-out, spotless and the showers are amazingly space-age. The bus to Carlisle stops outside the site entrance and goes into the city every hour. The only drawback is the lack of internet coverage.

The drive down was motorway pretty much all the way until I took the A689 to Workington at Carlisle. Is this the road which goes to Bishop Auckland? What a treat to drive from Workington to Bishop Auckland! Steady now, Rog, you've never actually been to Workington. A real treat is having radio reception again. I've really missed it. At Moffat I got lousy reception but at least I got some, and listened to the England/Sri Lanka 50-over match with great difficulty. I did manage to get reception on Channel 5 to watch the highlights at 19:00, but fell asleep before it came on and missed Jos Buttler's amazing innings!

Cycled into the substantial village of Dalston a mile or so down the road. Just outside it is a huge grey metallic factory which I took to be a feed mill but which, it transpired, was a Nestlé beverage plant. A lady on the bus the next day told me they made Nescafé and Blue Riband biscuits there. I passed the Blue Bell pub as I entered the square. So many pubs in the North are called “The Blue Bell”. They are all named for a blue bell (the kind with a clapper) which is usually on the pub sign, and not the flower. I wonder what it's all about. Outside the Co-Op was a placard from a local paper saying “Robbery bid man demanded 'zombie' haircut”. Bizarre! Unfortunately the shop had sold out so I couldn't read the story.

 

 

Anti-Bulgarian prejudice in Carlisle

On Monday I took the bus into Carlisle, just a couple of miles. What a joy it is to use my bus-pass again and get something for nothing. We passed a big Pirelli tyre factory on the way in. At first sight the city is pretty gruesome, with street after street of horridly run-down terraces and disused warehouses and vacant sites. Once into the centre things get better, but, after Edinburgh and Glasgow, it seems a pretty low-rise sort of a place with little pretension to even the slightest grandeur. After a couple of hours of strolling around, though, I came to like it a lot. The layout is quite eccentric and there are lots of little fiddly bits. Not one of the streets seems able to travel from its start to its end without spawning alleys or ginnels or snecks all over the place, and there are arcades, too. There is even a nice  faux-Georgian crescent. The railway station, splendidly named the “Citadel”, is monumental and there is the daintiest town hall, now the tourist information centre. 

The Town Hall

On 'Start the Week' on Radio Four this morning they were discussing Rod Liddle's new book “Selfish Whining Monkeys”. It sounds great, largely because he agrees a lot with me about stuff and, therefore, must be right! How can I get to read it before 2020, because it's against my principles to buy a book new and I'm sure it won't appear in charity shops until then? Well, I popped into Waterstone's just in case they had it on sale for a fiver or so, but no joy. On the 'Clearance' shelf, though, they had Morrissey's autobiography and a tourist guide to Syria. Mmmm. What I did find was a book by Jon Ronson called 'Frank', which is about a film about Frank Sidebottom which is being released in 2014 starring Michael Fassbender and Maggie Gyllenhaal. I'd certainly be interested in seeing that.

Well, it was last of the current series of “Have I Got News For You” this week and I hope to God it's the last. It's a pale imitation of the programme it was even two years ago and has turned into a second-rate joke show. It was sad to see, like watching a beloved pet dog drag itself from its bed to bark weakly at a visitor. I mean, there was some idiot called Joe Wilkinson on the last show. He said nothing apposite and just made a string of pathetic quips. Who the hell is Joe Wilkinson anyway? Is satire dead? And, while we are at it, what IS the point of Harriet Harman? 

Went into Carlisle again on my last day and had a look at the major architectural features. The cathedral is initially rather unimpressive because, being built from red sandstone, it looks somehow recent. Inside, though, it's a different story. It's quite small compared with, say, Durham or York, but this adds to its attraction.

The Choir roof

There is a large chapel dedicated to the Border Regiment, or, to give it its full name, the King's Own Royal Border Regiment. One of its battle honours is Neuve Chapelle, where my grandfather was killed and was buried. There are many interesting memorial tablets, including one which shows that, in the South African War of 1899-1902 (the Boer War), three times as many men died of disease as were killed in action. How careless of the people in charge who should surely by then have known better. There is also a tablet to a man who was the vicar of Hutton Roof, a small village in south Cumbria, and who was awarded the DSO and the VC. He was also chaplain to the King. How did a padre get involved in action to the extent of winning the DSO and VC? He must have been involved to some extent because he died of wounds in October, 1918. Very strange. The choir is perfect and some bright spark has thought to place a mirror on its back on a table, pointing upwards so that you can look properly at the magnificent vaulted ceiling, heavenly blue with gold stars, without getting a fatal crick in your neck. The cathedral was built in 1133, so the new-looking red sandstone has lasted very well.  

 

The East Window

The station was next and was a cathedral in its own way. It is impressively called Citadel Station. If you can imagine a shoe-box with no lid and no ends; the two sides are of stone, twenty-feet and two storeys high and contain all the station offices, the ticket office, the waiting room, the left luggage office, the station-master's office, the buffet and so on. The shoe-box covers eight railway tracks. Spanning the two sides is a glass roof supported by a cast-iron canopy, surprisingly delicate given the length of the span. Inside, the station is light and airy and has such a pleasant atmosphere I wandered around for probably twenty minutes. As a bonus, the station is the northern terminus of the famous Settle and Carlisle Line, which the powers of evil tried so hard for so many years to close.  

 

Citadel Station

 Carlisle, you know, used to be the home of the state brewery. Yes, you and I, tax-payers, used to own a brewery, complete with its own chain of pubs. It was sold off to Theakston, the Yorkshire brewery and closed by Scottish and Newcastle Breweries after they had taken over Theakston. I had imagined its sale was the first fuhrer directive issued by Maggie as soon as she strapped herself into the Harness of Power in 1979, but, in fact, Grocer Heath was the culprit in 1971.

I thought Carlisle was terrific and congratulate the people who live here.

29 Moffat

“Magical Moffat – Scotland's Wee Gem”
C & CC Site
May 30^th - 31^st

This episode is going to be a bit delayed. When I got to my next stop I found I had no internet coverage with my dongle. It's a pretty boring episode (I slept most of the time) so you won't have missed too much.

After dropping-off for a night's rest at Lochgilpead I moved on to Loch Lomond and had another quick stop at Luss.

 

 My friends the mallards were still around and mobbed me pretty much as soon as I got there. Then quite a long drive (ninety four miles) down along Loch Lomond, over the Erskine Bridge and on to the M74 towards Carlisle. The geography along the way, once free of Glasgow, was pretty much rolling grassy, rocky and heathery fells, sheep and babbling brooks.

Busy site right in the centre of town. Had a walk around the metropolis (pop.2,500) in the afternoon after my usual nap. Nice! Old lady sitting on a seat outside the cemetery having a fag and basking in the sun had a quick chat, saying she could manage if this weather lasted until Christmas. More hotels here than people, because as I discovered, it used to be a popular spa town. Must try to take the waters to-day. Got an interesting Japanese detective novel in Oxfam and asked the ladies there for their opinion of the best fish and chips in town. One had just closed down, possibly to re-open, because the ninety-year-old lady proprietor had died.

Outside the very old, very interesting, but very closed Black Bull Inn was an inscription which left me puzzled. Was it ambiguous or am I being dense?  Also passed the narrowest hotel in the world (it's official, it's in the Guinness Book of Records). A sighting to go with the narrowest snooker hall in the world (not official, though, just my guess) which I had seen in Darlington.

Sat outside in the warm sun and read for the rest of the afternoon. The people in the caravan next to me have a small cat on a lead. I must ask them how they trained it. Katie had phoned me to ask if I wanted a ginger tom cat which her friend was going to have to let go as she was moving flats. Another Mick! It would be interesting, but I think that a female would be better for me as they don't wander like a tom. Another Mick, though!

I had bought a Times as a Friday treat and found a wonderful article on Johnny Wilkinson by Simon Barnes. How about this for journalism?

 

Turn on your television at teatime and you'll find yourself watching a quiz show. What do the contestants have in common? Ignorance. They grin and guess and hope for questions about Coronation Street and maybe Manchester United. They know nothing. They just want to be on telly.

At lunchtime you can watch random strangers buying antiques to sell at auction, all ignorant of the basic facts of history, without any understanding of craftsmanship and knowing nothing about the antiques market. But they're on telly, famous for the usual length of time. Call it Warholsworth, four to the hour.

Scan the channels and you find talent shows for people without talent and gory revelations about people no-one is interested in. The world is full of people who, with no qualifications such as knowledge, intelligence, understanding, talent or personality, have received a homeopathic dose of fame; fame in the abstract; fame as a kind of basic human right; fame unearned; as ardently sought as it is undeserved. To each such person a Warholsworth. It is part of the way we live.

How about that? He's right, isn't he? How weary he sounds of this dumbing-down awfulness. O Tempora, O mores. Of course he is, like everyone else, just in search of a hero and goes on to talk about Wilkinson, who, because of his temperament, shunned the limelight but in vain because of his tremendous talent. Great article.

And then I saw some good news. Malcolm Glaser has died, the American property developer who bought Manchester United and turned it from one of the richest clubs in the world to one of the most indebted and who is responsible for the club's current malaise. This is a man who, when “his mother Hannah died in 1980, leaving a million dollars, ….assumed all her assets and for the next twenty-four years resisted his sisters' challenge to his mother's will.” He made a fortune from shopping malls and trailer parks and was successfully sued for illegally charging trailer park tenants an extra $3 a week per dog and $5 per baby. This was a bad person, a monster, and now he's dust and has discovered that you really CAN'T take it with you. I'm so glad he's no longer among us. Someone like this should never become owner of a community asset like a football club. The game must protect itself against such animals.

I also found a really funny article (really good value, this Times) about a Wigan footballer who had his wedding rings (he was about to get married) and FA Cup medal stolen and who was quoted as saying “I am devastated, as is my fiancėe. The medal is priceless.” I do hope he is still getting married.

Well, dear reader, your correspondent is ashamed of himself. Saturday was such a beautiful day I spent it sitting in the sun, reading the paper and my Japanese detective mystery, which is very strange. Nothing at all to report, then. Never mind, everyone is entitled to a day off now and then. Onwards! I promise to try harder.

28. Islay and Jura

May 26^th - 28^th

After a short drive I got the ferry from Kennacraig in western Argyll to Port Askaig in Islay. The trip takes two hours, down West Loch Tarbert then across the Sound of Jura into the Sound of Islay, and it's spectacularly beautiful. The sea was like a millpond and the Paps of Jura were prominent over to the north.

 

The Islay ferry at Kennacraig

I had a bite to eat and found myself sitting opposite a middle-aged woman who had been one of the SOAS team (The School of Oriental and African Studies) team which lost in the final of University Challenge this year. She was knitting; now, I don't know a great deal about knitting, but I think she was much better at answering difficult general knowledge questions than she was at knitting. I smiled and she smiled back and she looked quite pleased and surprised to have been recognised, but I didn't ask for her autograph.

Jura, from the Islay ferry

I had planned to go to stay with my cousin Jennifer at her home on Jura, but the ferryman said my van would be damaged by grounding on the slipway at the landing on Jura. (The ferry is very small and looks like an old WWII tank landing craft.) This was a bit of a blow. I drove off into Islay to try to find a caravan site, but without luck until Jennifer's daughter Sarah, who works in the Community Office at Craighouse, the only village on Jura, found one at Port Mhor on the south-west side of the island. Booked in there, but there were no electrical pitches left. Fridge in danger of becoming smelly and no TV or radio. Went to bed early.

The Jura ferry at Port Askaig

The next morning I drove up to Port Askaig, left the van there and got the ferry over to Jura on foot. Jennifer collected me and drove me the nine miles to Craighouse. It was a lovely warm day, and we went for a walk through the village, past the Jura distillery, up the only road on the island, alongside the Sound of Jura, and collected Jennifer's grand-daughter, Ava, from school, having first popped in to see Sarah at work. On the way back I had a look at an exhibition in the church of old photographs of Jura life. It looked harsh. We stopped off to buy ice-creams at the village shop and ate them sitting on the quay. In the afternoon, Jennifer's husband Keith drove us up to the far north of the island. Many deer and few people; there are two hundred people in total on Jura. Sarah and her husband Ronald, who is a native of Jura, live in an old ghillie's cottage, one of a pair, in an otherwise isolated spot. Jura is divided into (I think) six estates, one of which is owned by David Cameron's wife's family. Another is owned by an Australian who is planning to build a golf-course.

Jura distillery

 I got the ferry back to Islay, spent another night at Port Mhor, again without electricity, and met Jennifer at Bridgend, at the head of Loch Indaal, the next day. We took the van up to the north-west of the island to an RSPB reserve on Loch Gruinart. Again, it was a beautiful day and we sat outside the van and had a cup of tea. After that we went back to Bridgend and had a drink sitting outside the hotel there. It was a great treat to sit outside in the sun. It's been a long time coming this year. The islands have a relatively mild climate because of the effect of the Gulf Stream.



An old Jura house from the photo exhibition

It was ironic that I visited Islay now that I no longer drink. Islay malts used to be my favourite whisky, particularly Laphroaig. I loved the slightly medicinal tang of the peat and iodine flavour. While searching for a camp site I had seen all the nine distilleries except three and had seen the road-signs pointing to two of the others. The nine are Caol Ila, Bunnahaibhan, Bowmore, Laphroaig, Lagavulin, Ardbeg, Bruichladdich, Kilchoman and Gartbreck (a new one).  Outside the Bruichladdich distillery is a huge disused copper pot still, about fifteen feet high.

I caught the evening ferry back to the mainland and dived into the site at Lochgilpead at about 11:30 . Slept well, despite the smelly fridge.

A view from Jennifer's house

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another view from Jennifer's house

 

27. Lochgilpead

Private Site
23^rd May - 25^th May

It's my birthday to-day. Happy birthday, Rog. I see I share my birthday with, amongst others, George Osborne(43) (oh dear), Joan Collins (81), Graeme Hick (48), Richard Hill (41), Anatoly Karpov (63), Martin McGuinness (64) and Bob Mortimer (55). Could be worse. If my Mum had hung on for another day I would have been born on the same day as Bob Dylan.

Sixty-seven and I still haven't opened the batting for England at Lord's. Must try harder.

 

Ardrishaig Bowls Club

Quite a long drive (for me) to-day, 58 miles, up Loch Lomond to Tarbet, round the top of Loch Long, through the Argyll Forest Park, past Rest and be Thankful (a place on the map but which I didn't notice on the road) and down the west bank of Loch Fyne past Inveraray to Lochgilpead. I would have liked to go to Crianlarich because I love saying it. Crianlarich, Crianlarich , Crianlarich. There, I said it without even going there. As I set out the sun was shining on Loch Lomond and on the surrounding mountains and things looked great. There was even a bit of snow left on the mountains. The drive was predictably scenic and I passed the Loch Fyne Oyster Centre. It was strange to think of oysters inland, but then, of course, Loch Fyne is a sea loch. There is a huge acreage of sitka spruce planting here on the hillsides along the way and many of the plantations are being harvested. It's a great pity they make such a mess when they fell the trees, leaving a landscape like a World War I battlefield. Inveraray was the only place of any significance and it was totally monochrome, or black and white anyway, and it looked as if it was wearing a uniform. Possibly the whole place is owned by one person, just as most houses in Midhurst have yellow window frames because they are owned by the Cowdray Estate. 

I had a minor disaster with the gears on the bike and so took it into Crinan Cycles on the main street of Lochgilpead. The guy there fixed it for me within the hour, but at the cost of a new derailleur set-up, chain and back wheel. Mmm, expensive, but it goes like a dream now. To punish it I will take it on a long run along the Crinan Canal to the west coast. Not to be left out I fixed my bike computer myself. It's surprising what a difference it makes to know how fast you are going and how far you have travelled, to-day and since the beginning of time. Adds a bit of spice to the legwork.

On Friday night some bad people came, the first I've encountered so far. I was reading in the van when a motorhome came roaring fast past me (the limit is 5mph) and reversed, fast again, to skid to a halt about three feet from me. Three men were in it. I told them they were too close and they seemed amazed. A small old one started getting uppity. They said the warden had told them to pitch close. When I told them again they were too close the old one started getting twitchy and saying “Why?” “Why”? I said “What do you mean 'Why'. You're too close”. Luckily the driver had half a brain and moved over. The old one kept looking in my window and staring. Jesus! I don't need this. This is the trouble with badly-run sites. You don't get this kind of nonsense with Club sites. Thankfully, this morning they had gone. Bad people!

My cycling helmet has been a bit sloppy since I had my hair cut very expensively, and I looked for a towelling headband to take-up the slack. To great amusement I tried a hunting, shooting, fishing sort of shop. I said that I didn't think fishermen wore such a thing and the good-natured shopkeeper said “No we make sure we don't sweat”. I like a bit of craic on a Saturday morning.   

 

Towards Crinan

The Crinan Canal was built in the late 18^th century. James Watt was, among others, involved in the project, but he was better at steam engines and there were many problems. It was dug through peat bog (the Moine Mhor, one of the largest areas of raised peat bog in Britain) and the walls collapsed, flooding the surrounding land. The help of Thomas Telford, a real engineer, was enlisted in 1811 and, after six years, the canal re-opened in 1817 and has been just fine since. Talk to the engineer, not the oily rag! The purpose of the canal was to save ships rounding the treacherous Mull of Kintyre when heading for the Outer Hebrides. Ships could sail down the Clyde, round the Sound of Bute, up into Loch Fyne to Lochgilpead then through the canal to Crinan on the western shore of Kintyre and into the Sound of Jura.

The Crinan Canal for me

I don't like the wild raging sea

Them big foamin' breakers

Wad gie ye the shakers

The Crinan Canal for me.

Small cargo vessels called 'Clyde Puffers' made many of these trips, laden with coal and general necessities for the isolated communites of the West. One of these splendid little boats is preserved and moored in the basin at Ardrishaig at the eastern end of the canal.

 

The last Clyde Puffer

 

I cycled from Lochgilpead to the northern end at Crinan, all the way along the towpath. On the way I overtook a woman cycling with a small black and tan terrier. Suddenly, a fish rose, and the dog leaped into the canal and swam after the ripples. Finding no fish he swam back to the bank with a look of total bliss on his little face. Somebody's day made!

Also on the way I passed Moine Mhor (The Big Bog), where the Dalriada lived on rocky outcrops when they migrated from Ireland 1500 years ago. The water in the canal is black, presumably from the peat surroundings, black, black as a banker's heart. (Sorry, I watched The Fast Show last night).

Also on the way I heard my first cuckoo of the year, loud and clear, calling from the wooded hill overlooking the canal.

The Cuckoo comes in April

He sings his song in May

In June he dines on roast beef

In July goes away

That's an old one, but I think I got the third line wrong.

Crinan itself is just a basin on the canal and a sea-loch on Loch Crinan, an offshoot of the Sound of Jura. There is a bar there and a coffee shop and a small lighthouse. I had a rest, looked out at the hills and mountains surrounding the water and started back for the eastern end at Ardrishaig. It was a really enjoyable trip and amounted to exactly twenty miles. My knees were humming by the end and I'm a bit stiff now. In fact, I was too tired to have the barbecue I had planned. Although my strength was sapped by losing about three pints of blood to the midges, I should be fitter then this. Another twenty miles on Sunday! The bike went beautifully.

 

The Basin at Crinan

Talking of midges; they are omni-present here (plenty of water) and very persistent but not nearly as vicious as the West of Ireland midges. Those blighters were really voracious and you could feel them boring into you. Sometimes a bite would actually make you jump, and you couldn't stay outside amongst them when they were in full attack mode. Someone I know made some anti-midge protection lotion from a recipe on the Internet. It worked really well, but when she went back to the site to make some more she found it was intended for horses!

Talking of engineers and oily rags reminds me of a previous life working on contract for an insurance company in Croydon in the 'Eighties. A team of six of us had risen to the exciting challenge of migrating data from the old underwriting computer system to the new one, hopefully due to go live at some time in the not too distant future. Starting out as The Migration Team we became The Mutants, because the quality of the data was so poor that we had to mutate it, and, indeed, make most of it up to turn it into information to populate the new system. It was a dark and lonely job, totally without glamour or kudos, and we were all Oily Rags. I remember going up to the City to a meeting with our team leader, and he stopped off at Victoria Station to print some business cards for himself with the legend “Nick Hallett – Oily Rag”. He was a bit of a character.

 

26. By the bonny, bonny banks of Loch Lomond

C & C Club site
21^st - 22^nd May

A thirty-seven mile drive here from Stepps, right through the middle of Glasgow on the M8, over the Clyde and then back over it again on the Erskine Bridge, skirting Dumbarton, which looked interesting. Just before the centre of Glasgow was quite a sizeable loch in a public park with over a hundred swans on it. I guess that's where my three from last night came from.

The first sight of Loch Lomond through a break in the trees and surrounded by mountains is quite breathtaking. The site is right on the bank of the loch in a 'conservation village' (whatever that is) called Luss. It's part of a big estate, I think, probably owned by Abramovic. It's a very strange village, perfect in every way. Tourists come here to gawp at the neat stone cottages with their beautiful gardens of many colours and to take a boat down the loch. So many come that there is a huge car park, with 'Visitor Centre' and 'Glass Studio' and 'Highland Gift Shop'. I went into the 'Village General Store', hoping to buy some bread and milk, but was confronted with souvenirs and woolly stuff and craft work. The whole place gave me a creepy feeling. It's a bit like Portmeirion, the village in “The Prisoner”. As I rode around I kept looking over my shoulder expecting to see a giant white balloon coming bouncing down the road after me. I began to wonder if the people who lived here were like the Stepford Wives. So different from Stepps, a mere thirty-seven miles away.

Loch Lomond, looking north

I think I might become tired, if I lived here, of tourists poking cameras into my front garden and walking mindlessly in groups of fifteen down the middle of the road. I even saw a German in full highland dress (well, he was speaking German, anyway; maybe he was a cosmopolitan local). If I lived here I might dye my beard tartan and set myself up as a local landmark and charge the grockles to take a photograph of themselves with me.

I had a look in the graveyard to see if there was anybody famous buried there (that's the sort of thing you do to amuse yourself in a place like this). Nobody, but one headstone had an interesting Gaelic inscription:-

An cuid de Phàrras dhaibh

I wonder what it means. Another, that of a “wife and mother” of thirty-five, said “Thy Will Be Done”. I'm afraid I wouldn't be quite so accepting if I had been her husband or child.

 

The main street, Luss

But let's talk about the good things. The site itself is typical Camping and Caravanning Club; a bit scruffy and rough-and-ready but spotless and well-run and with friendly staff. The pitches are in clearings, so I have my own private bluebell wood. Overlooking the village is a large hill almost covered in bluebells. I was talking to the warden about it. He said he and his wife had gone out on to the loch the previous day and had taken a photo of it, but 'it hadn't come through'. We agreed that some things are just too beautiful to be photographed. Many gardens in the village have thriving azalea pontica in full bloom, and the scent is just exquisite. I remember my Dad used to have three or four in his garden and I used to go and stick my head in amongst them to get the full effect. Even the leaves are scented. I took a couple of his seedlings to Ireland and they started well, so I hope they are thriving now. Bluebells and azalea pontica. As good as it gets.

Bluebell Hill

I bought myself a bottle of Irn-Bru because (a) it's Scottish and (b) it's made from girders. It says on the bottle “Bru'd in Scotland to a secret recipe for over 100 years” then goes on to give you the ingredients! Some secret, eh? What, by the way, is “Ponceau 4R” which it contains? It might be the flavouring which gives it the slight tang of rust. I fear the whole thing may be an acquired taste and I might not have enough time left to me. I'm rather worried that I may have become the sort of person who drinks something called “Ponceau 4R”.

On the way back from my shopping trip I noticed that there were lots of expensive limousines and SUV's, many with blacked-out windows, parked outside the slightly sinister hotel which is next to the camp-site. I think it must be the annual drug-dealers' conference. Either that or a Police Federation meeting.

 

On my last evening I went down to the water's edge to take some snaps. The midges are out! Oh, calamity!

 

 

25. Stepps, Glasgow

Private site
May 18^th -21^st

An easy but boring 35-mile drive over the Clackmannanshire Bridge over the Firth of Forth. Stepps is a small village just off the A80 on the road's way into Glasgow. I guess it's about five miles east of the centre. The site is quite strange, stuck discreetly on the end of a large holiday village in the middle of a poor, oldish council estate. For a private site it's really good value, absolutely spotless, with lovely well-tended gardens and free Wi-Fi. Many of the chalets are occupied by workmen for Babcock, most of them Bulgarian. Most of the tourers here are Germans. The day I arrived I went for a bike ride, forgetting to put my new cycling shorts on, exploring the train station, the bank, the bus stop and the supermarket.

This morning (Monday) I got the train into the city. At long last we have a really warm day and I was wearing just a tee-shirt quite comfortably. I could tell the moment I got out at Queen Street station that I was going to like the city. It's about twenty years since I last came and can't remember anything about it. The streets are arranged in a grid system, which makes it easy to explore.

The architecture is monumental, with everywhere five or six storeys of ornamented stone (don't ask me the style) with very tall ground floor frontages, so that even the smallest shops look massive. The Cancer Research charity shop was enormous. It's a great feeling strolling around in what feels like an open-air museum. It was interesting to see the Gaelic equivalents of the railway station names displayed, just like in Ireland.

What I liked most was the almost total lack of touristification, a welcome contrast to Edinburgh. This is a real place. It seems much more substantial and forward-looking than Edinburgh, which seems to be stuck in the past and feels a bit precious.

The statue of the Duke of Wellington outside the Gallery of Modern Art decorated with two traffic cones was one of the first things to meet my eye; some healthy lack of reverence for the symbols of empire there. I went and had a look in the Gallery, but I'm afraid modern art is not really my thing (I went in really because it was free and because a nice young lady came over with a lovely smile and gave me a brochure while I was admiring the Duke). There was one exhibit which took-up a whole room and which consisted of probably over a hundred models of churches made from cardboard boxes. As a keen modeller myself I was impressed by the build quality, but I'm afraid the message went over my head.

Walking back through Stepps, I noticed that it is a Catholic area, with a Catholic Church, a Catholic primary school and a Marian Centre. All the housing is council housing and it's obviously a poor area, but, almost without exception, the gardens are carefully planted and well-tended. Some old people were sitting in the sun in their front gardens and passed the time of day. Two tiny dogs charged me and tried to look menacing, barking from behind their garden fence, to everyone's amusement. It seems a friendly community.

After one glorious day the weather reverted. I managed to have a barbecue every evening, though. The last evening I was treated to a special aerial display. First, three swans flew over in a triangular formation, honking away to each other as they went. What a spectacular sight! Then, a little while later, it started to rain (again!). I had noticed earlier than there were clouds of tiny insects flying around (thankfully no midges) and the next minute the swallows arrived. I watched them happily for twenty minutes or so, until my grub was ready. One kept on flying straight at me and then soaring up over the edge of my awning just at the last minute. It was a brilliant performance.

On my last day I walked down to the Clyde and along the river for a while. A bit disappointing, really; they haven't made the most of having a major river flowing through the middle of the city. There are river trips, but none to-day. There was a nice monument to the volunteers who went to fight against Franco's fascists in 1936.

And then, of course, I had to ruin it all. I found a branch of Fopp and seized on it with delight. I got a remastered copy of '2001: a space odyssey' for £3. When I played it it didn't work. Well, that's to say it just showed a black screen for about five minutes. Anyway, they changed it for me with pleasure. I tried again and the same result. This time, however, I left it and, sure enough, it started the great 'Also Sprach Zarathustra' music and off it went with the apes and so on. It wasn't faulty at all! The film just starts with a black screen! I AM an idiot, it's been confirmed now.

No pasaran

The old Glasgow city has been sanitised and it wasn't until the last afternoon that I saw any of the old-style Weegies at all. Small, weedy, pale, emaciated, etiolated, of indeterminate age, absolutely paralytic and roaring. They used to be quite common, but I think they've been banished to Paisley and Partick now.

I'm proud to say I understood a few words spoken to me while I was here.

 

Kipper Junction, Alloa

CC site
May 16^th - 17^th

Pleasant drive, thirty-five miles, along the north bank of the Forth towards Stirling. Past Rosyth, where part of two giant aircraft carriers, each costing over £3 billion, are being built to maintain Britain's position as a major world power. In opportunity cost terms, they represent 5,000,000 hospital bed days (I made that up, but you get the idea).



The Ochil Hills

The site is at Fishcross, known locally as 'Kipper Junction', next door to Sauchie, the birthplace of Alan Hansen, and just outside Alloa. Settled in, had a cat nap and then cycled in to Alloa along a dedicated cycle path. A word to the wise. Don't go there. The view of the Ochil Hills, 700 metres high, from the site is stunning. I guess this is compensation if you live in Alloa, a view of the lovely Ochil Hills. In the centre of Alloa are a giant Tesco Extra, a giant Asda, a giant Morrison's, an Aldi and a Lidl and the town is just a vast supermarket car park and otherwise dead. This is total madness. It's a small place (25,000 population) which has been taken over by supermarkets. What were the planners thinking of? Surely they must have been taking kick-backs. Alloa was where Skol lager was invented. I'll say no more. Well, move on, move on.
The talk of Heavy yesterday reminds me of Billy Connelly's wonderful turn at the Secret Policeman's Ball.
Two Celtic supporters go to Rome for a football match. Afterwards, they go out for a night on the town. Entering a bar they order two pints of Heavy. The barman doesn't understand, so one asks him 'What does the Pope drink?' 'Creme de Menthe' he answers. 'Right, Jimmy', he says to the barman, 'gie us two pints of that'. After drinking seven pints apiece they become unconscious and awake later, sitting in a shop doorway and covered in diced carrots (here Connelly embarks on one of his peerless digressions). One says to the other 'Jesus, if that's what the Pope drinks no wonder they carry him around in a litter'.

Walking through the town I passed a low, dark, single-fronted pub with, outside it taking a wheeze on a fag, two very drunk, very feral-looking men. There was also a sign on the pavement saying “Nae numpties admitted”. I was going to go in, but decided against, in case I proved to be a numpty. Pity, as I was looking forward to the intelligent conversation which I'm sure was the norm inside.

On Saturday I was very tired and stiff after what had been a long bike ride the previous day (probably about fifteen miles and very hilly, but I can't be sure as my bike computer had gone mad again). I pulled myself together, however,and got the bus to Stirling. £7.20 return! Thank God for the bus pass. £7.20! A pretty bus ride, with chestnut trees in full bloom and lots of spectacular rhodedendrons and azaleas everywhere, both in gardens and in the woods along the way. While waiting for the bus at Fishcross, I noticed that the Ochil View pub used to be the Miners' Welfare Institute. This used to be coal mining area.

Stirling was great, really alive and kicking and with a very complex and steep layout and a very nice restored arcade. Sadly, I didn't stay long, as I wasn't feeling quite the ticket, but I stayed long enough to see the Old Stirling Bridge, built in around 1550 close to the site of the older (wooden) Stirling Bridge where the Scots under William Wallace defeated the English army in 1297. I also saw the charming Stirling University, set on a campus with beautifully landscaped gardens, ornamental lakes and some very handsome modern buildings. The place had a really pleasant atmosphere. 

Old Stirling Bridge

Interesting plaque in Stirling

I also saw a pub called, intriguingly, the Curly Coo. I also saw some Highland cattle on the way back, so maybe that's what they mean by Curly Coos. I also saw a field of both sheep and lambs and cattle and calves and, among them, a calf lying down with a bull. Never seen that before.

Went into Alloa on my way to my next stop and filled-up with diesel. Went past Alloa Athletic football ground. The trailing letter “a” had fallen off the sign on the wall outside the ground, so that you got a nice greeting from “Allo Athletic”. Much friendlier.