SCOTLAND - Isle of Bute

For today's trip I took a train to Wemyss Bay (pronounced Weeems) and caught a ferry to Rothesay on the Isle of Bute. The railway station at Wemyss Bay features a large circular concourse that flows into a curved covered walkway down the pier providing a seamless transition from train to ship - the curves were to aid the flow of large numbers of Edwardian tourists travelling from Glasgow to the island in summer. It was restored to it's original splendour between 2014 and 2016.

The ferry crossing takes about 35 minutes and  although it feels like you are going out into the ocean technically Bute is one of the islands in the Firth of Clyde. My ultimate destination was Mount Stuart, ancestral home of the Marquess of Bute but because of the glorious weather rather than take the normal service bus from Rothesay, I hopped on the open-top bus for a tour of the island on the way.

Mount Stuart is a large Gothic Revival mansion that is completely "over the top" but to be honest I knew it was like that as I have visited two Bute homes already. The family made their money in South Wales, owning the land in Cardiff on which the docks were built which as a result meant that they earned a fee for every ton of coal and other products that passed through the docks. The area of Cardiff between what is now Cardiff Bay and the city centre is called Butetown and the Marquess of Bute owned both Cardiff Castle in the centre of the city and Castell Coch to the north - both of which are also "over the top" 

The Marble Chapel

The Red Lantern in the Chapel

The Marble Hall

Drawing Room Ceiling

The Drawing Room

The extensive grounds slope down to the Firth of Clyde and are mainly given over to trees, there is very little formal or floral planting.

The shoreline below the house

The Rockery is one of the few areas of formal planting

By the time you read this I should be at home, having flown down as it was cheaper than the train. My two recent trips - probably because of the excellent weather on both - have really whetted my appetite for more of the west coast of Scotland so watch this space.

Finally I will bring you up to date on the ice cream flavours sampled - you will recall that last year Iru Bru ice cream was not a flavour I considered a success. This year I have tried two execllent ones - Whisky Marmalade and Tablet - if you don't know what Scottish Tablet is, it's like fudge but harder and more grainy.

There are more trips to come this year as I have some lost time to make up - see you all in Jersey in September!

SCOTLAND - Glasgow

As much as I love it, Edinburgh is rather twee. Like Bath or York it is a city that thrives on tourism and it does manage its tourist industry very well. Glasgow, however, is much more workaday. It's history as a mercantile city can be seen in its imposing buildings - stand in George Square surrounded by statues of its fathers and benefactors and look at the City Chambers and you can see this is a city that means business. Being realistic though it has to be acknowledged that like our other major port cities, Bristol and Liverpool some of Glasgow's wealth came from what we now see as "dirty money"

City Chambers

Rear of the City Chambers

George Square

The statue of the Duke of Wellington outside the Gallery of Modern Art has become the symbol of the city because of the traffic cone that is almost permanently on the statue's head. You can even buy postcards of it. Almost soon as the council take the cone down, naughty (and probably drunk!) Glaswegians put another up there - according to Wikipedia the council spend (I say waste) £10K per year removing the cones

Down by the River Clyde, Glasgow was much more industrial but  today the docks have closed and the shipbuilding has moved downstream meaning that the area has had to be regenerated. Walk along the Clyde today and you will see a clean river lined by modern steel and glass buildings. The building below is the Clyde Auditorium designed by Foster & Partners and nick-named by the locals The Armadillo. Interestingly Foster & Partners also did the design work for the stations for the Bilbao Metro in Spain. The station entrances take a similar shape to the Clyde Auditorium and have been nick-named by the the people of Bilbao - Fosterillos.

The Cylde Auditorium and the SSE Arena both designed by Foster & Partners

Glasgow Science Centre

On the east side of the city centre in a piece of higher ground stands Glasgow Cathedral. Although the cathedral has a Church of Scotland congregation it is in fact crown property and is managed by Historic Scotland. Behind the cathedral is the Glasgow Necropolis a hillside cemetary for the good and the great of the city. 

SCOTLAND - Lunch at The Willow

Stuart Cranston was a very successful tea importer, based in Glasgow. In 1871 he decided to put some tables and chairs in his shop inviting people in to taste his wares at 2d per cup, with extra charged for bread and cakes - and so the Tea Room was born.

His sister Kate, seeing that there was an opportunity to provide a venue for ladies to mix socially without chaparones - this was Victorian Scotland after all - took the idea further, eventually opening four tea rooms in the city. She became a very successful businesswoman worth millions of pounds in today's money as a result. One of her tea rooms was in Sauchiehall Street (which apparently in gaelic means Alley of the Willows) and was called the Willow Tea Rooms, today the building has been restored to its original splendour and is open for both guided tours and for you to take tea or have lunch.

Why is this all so special? Well Kate Cranston was a great admirer of one Charles Rennie Mackintosh and he was commissioned to design the Willow from scratch. Some of the original features remain in the building but where they are missing everything has been painstaking recreated from drawings, photos, known artifacts and newspaper cuttings. The result is stunning.

Detail from the wall on the ground floor

Now before we go any further I should point out that the high backed chairs in the photo above are available to buy in the gift shop at a cost of £3995 each. If anyone wins the lottery I would like 6 for my dining room!

I went to Mackintosh at the Willow as its now called at 11am today for a one hour guided tour of the building and then afterwards went in for a two course lunch. The tour was good, the food good and the surroundings outstanding so I would recommend it if you ever go to Glasgow.

SCOTLAND - A house in a box

The stags and hens were having a well deserved lie-in this morning after their escapades of the night before, but I headed out of Glasgow on the train on a Sunday jaunt to Helensburgh - a well-to-do resort and commuter town where the Gare Loch meets the Clyde Estuary.

Helensburgh has a long south facing Esplanade - which provides a nice place for a stroll or a sit and the town slopes up the hill behind.

We all have our own favourite architects, artists and designers - in terms of modern architects I like the work of Sir Norman Foster and Santiago Calatrava - but for me there is one stand out architect and designer Glasgow's Charles Rennie Mackintosh. In Helensburgh he designed The Hill House, high up above the town, which the National Trust for Scotland is currently facing a mammoth task to try and safeguard for the future.

In the words of the NTS The Hill House is "dissolving like an aspirin in a glass of water"

What has happened is that Mackintosh used a cement render on the outside of the house and unlike traditional lime render which allows a building to breath, the cement has allowed water in but then trapped it. This has in turn made the building incredibly damp and after over 100 years of Scottish weather the structure of the building is now disintegrating. What the NTS have therefore done is built a big metal box around the house to keep the rain out until such time as the building dries out. Once the building is dry they can then decide what to do to weatherproof it for the future. The "walls" of the box are chainmail and it is in fact the worlds largest chainmail structure.

It is all very impressive and you can walk around the metal structure and get views of the house you wouldn't normally be able to get. The box was erected 2 years ago and currently the NTS has planning permission for the structure for another 4 years, but the house is nowhere near dry yet so it will probably take longer.

Inside the The Hill House it is pure Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the library, drawing room, hall way and bedrooms, even the servants area - pantries and kitchen - all demonstrate his style and that of his artist wife Margaret McDonald with whom he worked on the project. It's not all about Mackintosh either as the house was built for publisher Walter Blackie and his family as their home so a visit also enables you to get an insight into how it was to live in the house and actually use the wonderful furniture and furnishings designed by Mackintosh and his wife.

The Drawing Room

Detail from the Drawing Room wallpaper

Sofa in the Drawing Room

Kitchen

The Master Bedroom

The high backed chairs are a famous Mackintosh design