Walking Downtown Glasgow

Glasgow grew from a small rural settlement on the River Clyde to become one of the largest seaports in Britain. Expanding from the medieval bishopric and royal burgh, and the later establishment of the University of Glasgow in the 15th century, it became a major centre of the Scottish Enlightenment in the 18th century. From the 18th century the city also grew as one of Great Britain’s main hubs of transatlantic trade with North America and the West Indies.

With the onset of the Industrial Revolution, the population and economy of Glasgow and the surrounding region expanded rapidly to become one of the world’s pre-eminent centers of chemicals, textiles, and engineering; most notably in the shipbuilding and marine engineering industry, which produced many innovative and famous vessels. Glasgow is known as the “Second City of the British Empire” for much of the Victorian era and Edwardian period. Today it is one of Europe’s top ten financial centers and home to many of Scotland’s leading businesses. Wikipedia

We were immediately struck on our arrival in Glasgow at the difference between it and Edinburgh. This is a comparison not a value judgement in that we liked both cities but in different ways. Glasgow seemed to have a more robust street infrastructure and to be more organized about moving people around and giving pedestrians more space. We walked from the station west on Regent Street to our lodgings, a modest business-tourist hotel towards the west end of downtown.

Regent street is framed by 3-4 story stone buildings, probably residences when originally built but now mostly offices and small B+Bs or hotels. In the view above it opens out to Blythewood Square, a nice but not accessible park. Our hotel sat a couple of blocks from the square so that we were close to downtown activities but not in the center of them.

On our way to the hotel we also accidentally discovered that the successor firm to Architect Rennie Mackintosh (Glasgow’s best known architect from the early 20th century) has its offices on Regent Street.

We got to see a lot of his work a little later in our visit.

Glasgow has converted two major streets, Sauchiehall and Buchanan, to pedestrian only. They intersect at the Royal Concert Hall and the Galleries Shopping Mall. As with most pedestrian streets the character varies a lot depending on how many pedestrians are actually using them; but these seemed to work fairly well, as on Sauchiehall Street below.

The elimination of curbs and use of special paving are key to re-establishing the character of the space; but the inclusion of trees in the center also proclaims pretty clearly that this space is for pedestrians, not automobiles. The walks are, of course, strong enough to handle fire engines, emergency vehicles and construction equipment.

At the intersection of the two streets the development had to deal with a steeper grade, as Buchanan slopes pretty steadily down towards the Clyde River. The entrance to the Galleries is on the left. It’s a fairly interior-feeling place and a bit anonymous in character but hey, it’s all about 21st century shopping.

As you can see, this part of the city maintains a modest scale in terms of height. This undoubtedly helps in the winter when daylight is constrained – or for that matter in July when we were there and it rained every day – as shown below.

A little ways down the street two key city functions have been placed adjacent to each other. The first is the entrance to Glasgow’s unique subway line – that’s the glass structure in the middle of the street in the background.

The other is the central tourist information office, a nearly ubiquitous feature of all the cities, large and small, that we visited.

Other information and streetscapes will show up as we explore other neighborhoods

Glasgow Central Station

After a couple of days of R+R on the Isle of Arran we boarded the fairy to Ardrossan, reconnected with the train and traveled eastward to Glasgow. Glasgow Central Station, through which we had changed trains on our way to Arran, proved to be a strong welcome to the city and much more distinctive than Edinburgh’s half-buried Waverly Station. Of course, before you are welcomed by the station itself, you’re greeted by the necessary but intimidating infrastructure that makes a rail terminus work.

Luckily, you’re delivered into a more orderly setting, and in this case, as with some others we experienced, the platform area has been glazed over for weather protection and turned into a wonderfully day-lighted space.

As a major hub, Glasgow Central Station combines the traffic of many longer distance travelers such as us with the daily flood of commuters from the nearby suburbs who live outside the unusual ring subway line. The many platforms sweep together into a large waiting hall that included some interesting architectural insertions.

It appears that at some point in time after the construction of the industrial revolution-age station, a more urban and urbane layer of retail and office was inserted into the spaces. This consists of one and two-story wooden structures with lots of detail and features such as the curved glass of the patisserie above. The contrast with the original structure strikes you immediately, and yet, because each has its own strong and consistent character, they seem to coexist pretty comfortably.

In some places, of course, the two styles conflict, such as this area where the desire for office spaces above the retail pushed the inserted wood forms right up against the structure of the station roof. And the introduction of 20th century technology infrastructure after the fact of 19th century architecture almost always creates challenges for the original design.

But overall the experience of being in and using the station functions proved positive. The basic elements of providing a successful travel experience for thousands of daily users seem so evident (easy circulation, clear signage, reasonably comfortable waiting areas, convenient support services, helpful information and ticketing areas, and of course my favorite, large well-articulated and day-lighted spaces) that you have to wonder why we don’t get it right every time.

In our day and age, the challenge is at airports; but that seems no reason to me that both at airports and hopefully soon at resuscitated US rail stations, spaces like this will again serve us as they have for so long elsewhere.

Over the top to Blackwaterfoot

To get a better sense of the island and its multiple characters, we took the bus from Brodick up and over a pass to Blackwaterfoot, a small community on the east side, and then around the north end and back to our B+B. It was misty for most of the trip so we definitely came away thinking that’s a common mood for Scotland.

Blackwaterfoot itself consists of a very small village of shops and a couple of hotels, one small and one larger. Its success depends on tourism which I can see in the summer; but I wonder about wintertime. Here’s the smaller Blackwaterfoot Lodge.

The hotel provides a more robust level of services and number of rooms. Nothing special in the way of architecture – unless you include the turret on the near corner.

And adjacent set of houses set a different tone – built solidly into the hill and looking as if they could handle the inevitable squalls that come barreling in on this side of the island.

Rock roses, hedges, and stone walls help to visually anchor and physically shelter this housing.

Too bad the hotel couldn’t have incorporated some of this traditional detailing. There is no real harbor at Blackwaterfoot, but a small cove has been carved out of one bank of the stream to provide some shelter for small boats.

I’m assuming that there may have been a fishing business there in the past; but most of the boats there today look like they’re used for sport fishing and general cruising. The stream itself tumbles about enough to prevent any useful boating traffic.

The bus stop / transfer point did thoughtfully include a birding shelter which we took advantage of.

The loop around the north end of the island underscored the rugged nature of the geography.  It begins gently enough, through some hills populated with farms and second homes.

As the trip continues, the road clings more closely to the shoreline; and some of the settings become more dramatic.

In other places small businesses seemed to be doing well, here a distillery

Striking forms to discover in such an isolated location. Nearby a small farmhouse, though it was hard to tell if it was an active farm or just a home. The soccer goal suggests that the farming may not be all that intensive.

As you can probably tell, many of these pictures were taken from inside the bus. The driver very generously stopped whenever people wanted to take pictures (and this was not a tour bus) but many shots were taken through rained-on windows. I did get interested at one point in the abstract nature of the photo composition when the bus structure was included.

It would take some practice and a lot of shots to get this right.

This side of the mountain (a bit of a stretch at 2,500 feet) was fairly heavily wooded; and there were places where we could see that clear-cutting was being used to harvest the timber.

Finally, we wound back down on the west side of the mountain where the setting was more open.

It didn’t hurt of course to catch some sunshine for the remainder of the trip. Must be fun to drive these roads on a motorcycle or in a sports car – except for that driving on the left stuff.