It’s time for us all to say goodbye to Glasgow. Edinburgh may be Scotland’s brain, but Glasgow is its heart and I’m always sorry to leave. We see Thomas off onto his train at Glasgow Queen Street then it’s back down Dundas Lane and up Buchanan Street. We walk the full length of Sauchiehall Street to Charing Cross, then traverse Kelvingrove Park, past the university, to reach the Kelvin Walkway.
The Kelvin Walkway mostly follows the river Kelvin from Glasgow to Milngavie. This ten mile route runs from the Riverside Museum on the banks of the Clyde to Milngavie, connecting the Clyde Walkway with the West Highland Way, but we pick it up in the west end. The Kelvin is another fast flowing, shallow, sinuous river and there are runners, walkers and cyclists all enjoying its charms today.
As we join the river, two herring gulls are tussling with a find, but there seems to be no animosity between them and, despite its adult plumage, one of them looks like a youngster. Next, a heron flies up into the Glaswegian skies. Best of all, we suddenly spot a dipper! After all the rural dipper habitats we have walked through, we finally find one in the outskirts of a city, dabbling and walking through the river with a grey wagtail nearby. We follow the river for a while, then decide to leave the Walkway and go up to the A81, to find a morning snack stop.
We walk through the West of Scotland Science Park and cross over to a lovely little café on the outskirts of Bearsden for flat whites and Copenhagen pastries that I greatly recommend. Then it’s off along the road to Milngavie and the Premier Inn (the Milngavie one, not the Bearsden one a few hundred metres away, as we discovered).
We meet up with Yvonne to retrieve the remainder of our kit and the new boots. Although the new boots are exactly the same make and model as our old ones, they look nothing like them. The soles are about a centimetre thicker and they are a completely different shape; they also can’t be folded in half in the middle. It illustrates just what a parlous state our old boots are in.
We have lunch and a chat and Yvonne lends us some additional waterproof bags. All too soon, it’s time for Yvonne to leave, as she is staying in Hamilton to get a head start on her journey home tomorrow. The highlands here we come!
Total distance so far: 571 miles
PS Tom very kindly brought my laptop up to Glasgow so I have sorted out my tech problems (hopefully). I am adding some new pictures from day 32 onwards, which should be done by tomorrow.
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