Glasgow

Glasgow is the first of the great Scottish cities to fall to my relentless footsteps.

After my last post (wherein I neglected to mention that although I was sitting in a hotel, I wasn’t actually STAYING in the hotel) the weather took a significant turn for the better, and it’s been sunny and relatively cloudless for the past two days. Still, we made the trek from Carlisle to Glasgow, which is around a hundred miles, in five days of walking. This would be a pretty average pace but for two things: I’m now about 10% heavier with camping gear, and the first day we only went maybe 12 miles. So the end result is that the past three days have been 23+ mile slogs through the Scottish highlands with relatively few encounters with civilization apart from the companionship of the M-74, never far from the bike path we followed into Glasgow. We’re here now, though, staying in a hotel that is… how should I put this… a bit of a fixer-upper. It means sleeping on a bed, though, and after four days of camping nothing sounds better.

Tomorrow is a rest day in Glasgow, which I think I’ve earned. I’m about 280 miles from John O’Groats, and I’ve got 20 days to go (I’m trying to finish up on the 14th to allow for travel back down to Edinburgh). Klonick only planned to accompany me as far as Glasgow, so when I leave town on the 26th it’ll just be me and my backpack (counts as roughly 1/5th of a person I’d say. Not much for conversation.)

I’ll be able to update the map and maybe upload a few more pictures tomorrow. For now, I need to rename the hotel I made the last post from. It is now known as The Worst Food and Best Hospitality In Scotland. This is because having served us the aforementioned food (and beer) the owner then declined payment.

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