Glasgow (Scotland to Iceland 4)

I’m finally back to the blog. I’ve been spending a lot of time in the shop making boxes and thoroughly enjoying myself. That’s for another post. For now let’s go back to June 2023 and Glasgow, Scotland.


Tuesday June 13, 2023

We generally come north in the summer to avoid the heat. Turns out it’s unseasonably hot in Glasgow right now. +29C in the forecast for today. The locals are all very happy about the nice weather. I was absolutely delighted in Inverness where highs got to +18C. No matter where I am, when the temperature goes above +25C my main objective is to remain cool regardless of what that looks like.

Yesterday we tried to book a bike tour for today but they were sold out. No surprise there. It seems you can often get a tour if you book two days in advance whereas trying to do it the day before is pushing it. So, this morning we are hanging around the room with the swamp cooler running and the fan above the stove also running. Our theory is that the stove fan will suck hot air out. We are on the fourth floor and we can attest that heat rises.

On every holiday I discover something and there have been a couple of important discoveries so far on this one. The first is that we make our own holiday and just because something is in a guide book doesn’t mean we have to see it in order to have a good time. In fact we’ve reinforced the idea that we’re happier with ‘the road less travelled by.’ Yesterday as we walked around the city we saw a large crowd at the end of the street. Rather than going in that direction, we decided not to go there. We haven’t been inside a church or a museum and that’s okay. We are having a good time in our own way, walking the streets, listening to the various accents, reading the interesting signs in shop windows, observing the slate shingles on the roof outside our window, trying to quickly sketch people at the train station as we waited for our train from Inverness to Glasgow. I know a lot of people would tell us that we could just as easily do these things at home whereas we can’t go into Edinburgh Castle at home. This is true, and it’s also true that we can make our own fun in our own way.

Yesterday we spent a lovely few hours in a vegan restaurant that was also a vinyl record store. The food was excellent; it was relatively cool, and the people-watching was fun. Today I’m catching up on blog posts and emails until it’s time for lunch. Yesterday while I was doing laundry I picked up a book from the book exchange in the laundry room. It was a good beach read and I finished it in one sitting, something I hardly ever do. It was a good day. A holiday is meant to be a change from normal routine and that will look different to different people.


Another thing we’ve discovered on this trip is that cycle tours are a lot of fun. This is a surprise to me because I thought that riding on the left would be an issue. With a bicycle guide it’s pretty easy to remember what side to ride on and the two tours we have been on so far have taken us on bike paths or very calm streets, another advantage of being with a local. The groups have been small, 6-8 so there are not endless lines of cyclists all trying to get somewhere at the same time. We have experienced that on some of the tandem tours of Europe we have been on and found it rather stressful.

Tomorrow we will meet up with the Adventure Canada crew and head out on the Ocean Endeavour. As for the rest of today, we’ll just have to see. Lunch is on the program as is packing. Other than that we’ll just do whatever strikes our fancy and the beauty of doing that in a place other than home is that there are no chores demanding attention so we can truly do as we please.