Back Home Via Bolton
I didn’t go directly home, but broke the journey to see Ipswich play Bolton at the Reebok stadium, which is very close to Horwich Parkway station. This meant changes on both legs at Preston.
I would have preferred to come home via Manchester, but because Manchester United were playing Stoke City, I couldn’t get a train ticket at a reasonable price.
This resulted in having to rush my second change at Preston, as the London train had already arrived, when my local train came into Preston a few minutes late.
But the train was in London at the scheduled time of 20:15.
I’ve talked about the problems of getting gluten-free food on Virgin at weekends, so I didn’t really bother, as they had one gluten-free ham salad sandwich in the Marks and Spencer’s at Glasgow Central station.
And of course, it’s impossible to get any gluten free food in a football ground.
If I’d gone home by Manchester, I could have eaten in Carluccio’s in Piccadilly station. And probably a couple of other places too!
Glasgow Central Station
Glasgow Central is a large impressive station, that has been refurbished quite recently.
The station has a large well-lit waiting/meeting area in front of the platforms, which is a bit like having Kings Cross Square under the station roof!
Too many stations don’t have enough space for waiting and meeting, but Glasgow Central is not one of them.
Walking Around Glasgow City Centre
I had an hour or so before I needed to get to Glasgow Central station, so as it was fine, I walked around looking at the buildings.
Glasgow is easy to navigate, as it has lots of wayfinding liths, just like London.
As you can see, some are megaliths and have a lot more than just a simple map and a few words.
Without doubt liths are the way to go.
This was illustrated, when I came across a group of students and a local, who were discussing in detail, the direction the students needed to go.
In my view, Glasgow’s liths may only have one problem, except for the misplaced Tourist Office.
And that is on Friday, with all the rain, they didn’t stand out, as the colours were too subtle. Perhaps, that is why London’s liths have yellow tops.
Riding The Clockwork Orange
My mother visited Glasgow in the 1930s and first told me about the Glasgow Subway. I know little of her trip or was it trips to Glasgow, except that she went by coach. She also told once, how a lady on the coach, put her hair in curlers to go to sleep. I don’t think I ever saw my mother with her hair that way!
Why she went, I have no idea, but the trip to Glasgow was probably the only vaguely exotic place I ever her talk of going.
My host at dinner last night, had told me that a station on the Subway was about fifteen minutes walk from my hotel. So to explore the city centre, before I took the train south, I walked to the station at Hillhead. An illustration of how times change was the Waitrose opposite the station. Only a few years ago, their furthest north store was at Newark.
I took the train to Buchanan Street station, which was close to the main stations and shops.
Although, the stations all seemed to have a lith with a map and information outside, I don’t think I ever saw a system map inside a station or on the trains.
But then as it is effectively one line going continuously round in circles clockwise and another doing the same in an anticlockwise direction, it is about as far in concept from ninety-nine percent of the world’s metro and subway systems, as you can get. So perhaps a map would just confuse people unfamiliar with the system. I suppose that in my journey from Hillhead to Buchanan Street, I could have taken any train in either direction. This is a bit like London’s old Circle line, before they broke the circle and made it a spiral.
The Anonymous Widower 