Galavanting in Glasgow

A solid day of walking for the GOHOs today. 28,000-ish steps from us, a few large hills and many a story heard.

We started the day off with a hearty breakfast at the hotel and then headed out for our first of two walking tours for the day.  Our first tour took us to meet in George Square (which is having major revamp and is currently all boarded up). From here we walked along George St and past a few of the Strathclyde University buildings with some more street art on them.  We learnt about some of the street art and the artist behind some of it (Smug) who also had work on some of the silos etc at home. We learnt that he is an Aussie now living in Glasgow and has been commissioned to do a fair few murals around the city as well as right around the world.

We headed up the hill towards Glasgow Cathedral (we didn't go inside) and heard some of the history behind this as well as the Royal Infirmary which is just next door. We heard about how the Glasgow Necropolis (City of the dead) was started and why. From here, we headed back down the High St and heard about some of the redevelopment in the area over the last 50 years. How there used to be a large women's prison there, which had to eventually be demolished as the living conditions in there were so bad.  They knocked it down and built some low rent housing. We finished up our first tour by heading to the Merchant Qtr. and finished at the Gallery of Modern Art. This area now boasts a fair few pubs and eateries after a major redevelopment of the area in 1980's by the Scottish Development Agency. It was developed then to repurpose some of the run down buildings and to try and sort out some of the drug issues in the area. While walking to our final stop in our tour, we saw a street blocked off with some filming happening, there were rumours of Spiderman being what they were filming.  Guess we will find out!

Outside the Gallery of Modern Art, there is a statue of someone on a horse.  He wears a traffic cone on his head currently. This started some time ago.  The city have had many discussions about how to stop this happening.  From CCTV to raising the plinth. Nothing seems to have helped. Now during festivities the statue wears different items including, face masks during COVID, football regalia during "show down" type games. This morning when walking past, he just had a traffic cone, a few hours later and he had gained a flag around him like a cape.

After our first tour we headed to get some lunch and have a quick look through some shops.  We then went back to the hotel to drop some stuff off and headed back out for a walk along the River Clyde.  It was a warm day in Glasgow today (23 degrees) so it was quite nice to walk along the river with a bit of a breeze there.  We walked until we came across the Clyde Arc and then decided to go in search of some more street art. We walked back along the river and found some more art and the location of where we would eat dinner and have a cheeky pint. While we were having early dinner we decided to book our second tour for the day.  We booked ourselves on the Glasgow: Ghouls, Ghosts and Gruesome tales tour.  This started at 7pm at the Glasgow Cathedral (the oldest building in Glasgow) and we heard some ghost stories from here to the infirimary, the necropolis and down through the city.  Whether you believe in ghosts or not, this was a very entertaining tour and the tour guide did a good job. We heard stories of grave robbing and the strange laws that still exist in Scotland to this day. Some of these laws were set in place to specifically charge certain people and they haven't been changed.  One law is in regards to robbing a specific persons grave. We heard about some of the development around the city and what that meant for some of the oldest graveyards and their residents.