Glasgow Gallivanting: June/July 2025

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Margaret and me

There was no June Gallivanting post because we were away over the end of that month and the beginning of July, a four-centre trip which included two visits to friends topped and tailed by time in the Lake District and the Yorkshire Dales. I’ll write those visits up in due course, but for now I thought I would summarise them in a gallery of benches for Jude (locations in captions). The pièce de résistance is, of course, the header which shows me with Margaret of From Pyrenees to Pennines. We had a lovely walk together near Masham in the Dales, followed by lunch with her and her husband, Malcolm.

Watermillock, Cumbria
Waterfoot Park, Ullswater, Cumbria
Ullswater at Pooley Bridge, Cumbria
Kiplin Hall, Yorkshire
Kiplin Hall, Yorkshire
Harewood House, Yorkshire
Harewood House, Yorkshire
RHS Harlow Carr, Yorkshire
RHS Harlow Carr, Yorkshire
Bolsover Castle, Derbyshire
Haddon Hall, Derbyshire
Jervaulx Abbey, Yorkshire
Aysgarth Falls, Yorkshire
Masham, Yorkshire

June

My exhibition ended in the middle of June, but I haven’t taken my Women’s History hat off yet with two walks in June (and another in July). On the Garnethill Walk I spotted the street art below – Grateful to be here is on the wall of a new gallery celebrating street art, which I must go back to visit properly. I didn’t know anything about the ceramic butterfly which was on a wall nearby but have since found out that it is part of a Sculpture Trail created by St Aloysius’ College.

Grateful to be here
Butterfly, Garnethill

Also artistic is this 1902 lampstand outside the Botanic Gardens’ main gate which has been weathered and flaking for many years, if not decades. One day I noticed it was getting a new paint job. It now looks rather splendid! It was refurbished by Jim MacDonald who was about to retire as a city council painter. I’m not sure if it was a parting gift from him or to him.

Part way there
The finished job

As part of Scotland’s Gardens Scheme Maggie’s at Gartnavel Hospital was open one Sunday. Named after Maggie Jencks, who came up with the concept when she was diagnosed with breast cancer for the second time in 1993, Maggie’s Centres provide support to make the experience of cancer more manageable for everyone. The Gartnavel Centre is formed as a ring shape within woodland and around a landscaped inner courtyard. I love how the leaves reflect in the mirrored tree stumps and how sometimes you can hardly tell where the garden ends and the building begins.

Main entrance
Mirrored tree stumps
Internal courtyard
Internal courtyard

Before we went on holiday we went to see Santana. We had booked tickets for a concert in March 2020 and – well, you know what happened. I certainly thought that given Carlos Santana’s age our last chance to see him and his band was gone, but here he is five years down the line playing up a storm at 77.

Santana
Carlos Santana
Santana full band

Finally for June, some cycling highlights including, in one case, aquatic cycling.

Clyde Muirshiel
Balglass Burn near Fintry
Saltcoats

July

July is my birthday month! We celebrated by going to Edinburgh for the day as there are loads of good exhibitions on that I wanted to see. We visited two at the City Art Centre (John Bellany and Post War Scottish Art – no photography allowed in either) and finished up at the National Library of Scotland which is celebrating its centenary. I just loved the Dear Library exhibition – on till April next year.

NLS centenary staircase
Exhibition flyer
Jackie Kay
Library cards
Mini protest banners
Book by book

In the evening, we were back in Glasgow in time for dinner at Six by Nico where the six course tasting menu changes every six weeks. The current menu is the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party which came with lots of theatricals. It’s not a dining experience I would choose regularly, but for a special occasion it was fun.

Menu
Paint the Roses Red
Jammy Dodgers
Vegetarian menu

John had a night in Oxford where he attended a dinner for a friend who has just been made a Fellow of the Royal Society. His B&B was very posh (Christ Church). It even had upmarket graffiti.

Tom Quad
Fountain in Tom Quad
Christ Church Men’s Cuppers Champions
Breakfast in Great Hall
Cathedral

July’s arty bits now. On this month’s Women’s History Walk (East End) I spotted these murals across the river on tanks at the Chivas Regal Distillery. The woman is Margaret MacDonald, wife of Charles Rennie Mackintosh. The summer-themed post box is on North Gardner Street in the West End.

Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh
Summer in North Gardner Street

Here’s a more unusual set of cycling pictures from John. At a farm café near Strathaven he learned about Polly, Molly and Colin and was able to see Polly in action.

Robot friends
Polly the Pusher

Maybe Millport is more like his usual views!

View of Arran from Cumbrae
Gardens in Millport
Ferry docking

But on his last cycle of the month, it was back to aquatics and cattle.

Crossing Fruin Water
Please moo-ve!

Each to their own. Happy August!

Scotland, UK , , ,

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  2. Pingback: This week’s small pleasures #453 – Thistles and Kiwis

  3. Happy belated birthday Anabel! So much to enjoy in your post. The bench gallery and the 1902 lampstand are fantastic. I chuckled at “aquatic cycling”. Happy August to you and John!

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  4. Pingback: This week’s small pleasures #452 – Thistles and Kiwis

  6. What an enjoyable read! Happy Birthday last month and thank you for sharing the beautiful pictures and the knowledge. As always, I have a strong urge to retrace every one of your steps! I have a strong penchant for benches and love that you capture them, too. Six by Nico looks cool and fun in an over-the-top way and I’ll have to check it out if I ever make it back to Glasgow.

    I love that you saw Santana – Oye como va! 😎

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  7. A belated Happy Birthday Anabel, I hope you enjoyed your day 🍰 Some lovely benches here, I like the Watermillock view and the refurbished lampstand looks good. I’m surprised Santana is still going – he was really good looking back in the day and Samba Pa Ti was one of my favourites at the time. The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party sounds like fun too.

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  8. Happy Birthday! So much to read and enjoy in your post! Love the selection of benches and the Maggie’s Centre Garden….what a great idea to have those mirrors! ( Didn’t comment earlier…electricity off until yesterday ! Hope you were OK during storm)

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  11. Happy Belated Birthday and wishing you many more, Anabel. My sort of birthday treat wandering around a city packed with exhibitions worth viewing. A lovely photo of you and Margaret.

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  12. A belated Happy Birthday and a great couple of months you have had. Have another Yorkshire Dale’s wknd planned myself and hope to get back up to Cumbria at the end of the month. X

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  15. what a fabulous 2 months. I loved all the benches. Can’t go past them now without a photo can we! And loved all the art. That birthday menu intrigued me. Burnt tomatoes and egg yolk jam??? It’s lovely to meet other bloggers and so nice to put a face to a name. And those robots 🫢 I enlarged them to see what they were, but unfortunately the writing was blurred. So can only guess at them. Have a great August, how the year is flying by

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  16. Quite a varied collection of benches—the curvy ones are special. Sounds like you had a great birthday celebration. Happy belated birthday!

    Libraries absolutely deserve every accolade.

    The Gartnavel Centre is beautiful. I can see it being a soothing place in hard times.

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  17. You are both so busy that I feel quite guilty about the sedate pace of my life. The cyclist certainly racks up the miles in a most impressive manner and still has the energy to stop and take good pictures.

    I enjoy coming on your tours as you always find much of interest along the way.

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  19. You are so busy you make me dizzy! What a fabulous 2 months of gallivanting. And of course I love the bevy of benches. The spiral one in Harlow Carr is my favourite, after the one with you and Margaret of course.

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  22. What a great recap, so many wonderful things you got up to. Love that you had a walk with another blogger (did you meet thru your blogs or IRL?). Hard to pick a favourite bench as there were so many awesome ones. I’ve done some aquatic cycling and once it didn’t end well! Happy belated birthday.

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  23. I honestly do not know how you fit it all in Anabel, especially the write ups , given that I’m only going out on walks a couple of days a week at present yet still have a large backlog of posts to get through with the sizing of photos, labeling and stamping them, then writing out each new post. Other days are spent either shopping for food, paying essential bills, house maintenance, gardening etc… yet it still seems a full active life… where I rarely have any time to get bored….

    Then I look at John and your own activities…. :o)

    I couldn’t do it. I like my indoors time and my downtime/ me time far too much to give it up for perpetual motion.

    Bob. BSS.

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    • I don’t think we’re so different, Bob! Remember this post covers two months and, other than the 12 days we were away which were busy, there was lots of time sitting reading or doing the boring life admin tasks. I still have my 2023/4 backlog which I will write up soon – maybe!

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  25. I’ve not written your Bday date in my diary – so sorry. Belated Happy Birthday – but what a fabulous combined month you had. Jealous I didn’t get to join you and Margaret for lunch!

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  26. And what, pray, is Egg Yolk Jam?? Thanks for our five minutes of pictorial fame! A fun morning and lunchtime I thought. You’ve definitely put Glasgow back in the frame with this post. Well, it’s always there in truth. It’s just that life is … complicated.

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  29. What a terrific couple of months you two had! Loved benches galore and especially the one with your happy companion. Never letting the dust settle for long, Anabel. Have an equally uplifting August xx

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  30. Hi Anabel – I loved the benches … and then the others … great cover-art of many of your comings and goings during June and July. Happy birthday too … I’ve stayed at John’s B&B … a few days in Oxford about ten years ago with a friend from SA, who was besotted with Morse … helped that I’d been at school there for 10 years. But I’d have loved to visited many of those places you’ve shown us – just not the puddles though! Good for the cyclists … and their additional add ons – cheers Hilary

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