The Midlands are rushing past at great speed as I look out of the window of the 7.30 train from Euston to Glasgow. It is Julie's birthday (24th July) and we are on a Virgin express on the West Coast Main Line at the start of a week in Scotland. Stafford is whizzing by and the first stop will be at Warrington. The train is only half full, so I have spread out on a double seat to myself. I have been shamefully "manspreading", which is a new social offence I read about last week. It is when a man sits on the train with his knees apart, thus signalling ownership of a larger personal space than he ought to have. I'm mad, bad and dangerous to know, fear my widespread knees!
The train is smooth, comfortable and quiet, now the irritating kid has stopped playing Frustration. For the first twenty minutes out of Euston he was popping the little plastic dome roughly once a second. I was formulating a suitable remark to his mother when he got bored and started using his phone instead. I'm over sixty now and well into grumpy old man territory, so the little shit was playing with fire.
We arrived in Glasgow dead on time at 11.59, and got a cab to our AirBnB in Hamilton Park Avenue in the West End. Our room is huge with ceilings about ten feet high and massive sash windows. 
Our hostess Lucy gave us a map of Glasgow and loads of recommendations for places to visit. Miraculously the weather is hot and sunny, 25 centigrade, IN GLASGOW! After "freshening up" we walked up to the Botanic Gardens, which are lovely but the glass houses are far too hot today. Having reviewed the options for the day we decided to go to the Riverside Museum on the Clyde. Our route took us along the lovely Byers Road and then through the university and past the Kelvingrove Museum, which we will save for another day.
The Riverside Museum is a brilliant exhibition of transport and local history, displayed in an interactive and lighthearted way. I was pleased to see the battered BMW motorbike that Ewan McGregor rode around the world. But a German guy who was also looking at the motorbikes said he thought it was really ugly and preferred the classic Black Shadow further up the Motorcycle Wall. I smiled and agreed, not being a motorcycle expert. My only bike was an MZ 150 Eagle, an East German two stroke about as sexy as I am.
The Zaha Hadid designed museum is next to the Clyde , and moored up on the quayside is the Glenlee. It is a steel barque built in 1897 in Glasgow that sailed to Australia and South America to collect cargos of coal, guano and grain. It ended up as a Spanish Naval training vessel before returning to Scotland as a museum. 
The museum closed at 5pm, and we took the subway, Glasgow's underground railway. It's a single circular line, one hundred and twenty years old, and it's £1.65 for a single, not bad. We got off at Kelvinbridge Station close to our accommodation, and found a pub called the Bellhaven Dunbar for a well deserved sit down and a drink. I liked the framed fork handles.
timharnesstravels 