Glasgow

2017-05-01

We picked up a hire car in Edinburgh, then headed to Glasgow to meet Katherine.

We stopped at a few places we saw on the map on the way, first up House Of The Binns which wasn't that exciting.

Next we stopped at Linlithgow Palace. Okay view from outside but heaps of midgies, we didn't both going inside. There was a wedding on at the church with the groomsmen wearing kilts.

The coolest stop was the Falkirk Wheel. I told Rachael we were going to see a boat elevator but she didn't believe me, and even when we got there she was convinced it was a road with busses until we walked up and saw the water.

Even when we saw it she still didn't really beleive it. We walked further upstream and saw some loch's fill and float boats up which helped it make a bit more sense.

This video is a pretty good explanation:

When we passed through Glasgow earlier it felt like Queen St in Brisbane, and driving in was even more like Brisbane and was like driving on the ICB. It must just have a similar architecture or something.

We went to Pollok House and Garden while we waited for our check-in time and to meet up with Katherine and co. There was some really nice gardens and was a good free place to visit. They even had free parking which wasn't the case at any of the other stops that day.

We met up with Katherine, Tom and his brother Liam. We went to an awesome vegetarian Indian place for dinner that was super cheap and tasty - and very busy and booked out so we had to get takeaway.

It was great having someone else organizing our day, and Katherine had planned out heaps of places for us to stop. First up was Devil Paulpit which she found from some blog about outlander. Was super hard to find, and then even harder to work out how to get down but was an incredible stop. There was no signage and only a few other people which is crazy because it's such a cool little spot.

We found an abandoned castle behind a gold course, Buchanan Castle.

Next up we went to Loch Lomond and climbed Conic Hill. Was a nice little hike but when we got to the top the winds were just crazy, like mildly-cylonic strong. It had great views of the lake, and the surrounding green hills.

We then checked out Bracklinn Falls, which was a nice waterfall and wooden bridge.

That night we were staying at a castle Katherine found on AirBnB, which had fields with lambs and pheasants.

The next day we drove to Perth, where there was a lake good for wildlife watching. But it was mostly just bird watching, cost money and didn't look that exciting. So we just went for a walk instead, we saw a deer and some red squirrels.

About lunchtime we said goodbye to Katherine, Tom and Liam and started south on the motorway to England while they headed up to the highlands.