timharnesstravels

4th August 2017

The Captain of our 757-200 has announced that we need to wait for fifteen minutes before there is room on the runway at Gatwick for our takeoff. I’m flying to Chicago with Icelandair via Keflavik airport. I haven’t flown with Icelandic before, and so far it appears pretty good. There is enough legroom, and there is a headrest I can rest my head on! The plane is designed for mighty Vikings, with more space than Asian airlines. There is even storage for one’s battle axe and shield, which is always a challenge on EasyJet.

I’m on my way to Chicago to see my cousin Martin. We meet up every few years, but I haven’t been over to Illinois since 2009. The plane is full, and I have got an aisle seat so I can see what my neighbours are watching on their seat-back screens. I’m quite enjoying a Harry Potter film and bits of Beauty and the Beast. On another screen, I can see that we are now somewhere over the Hebrides and there are about ninety minutes to go to reach Keflavik.

The airport was congested and slightly chaotic. Announcements on the PA asked for volunteers to stay over in Reykjavik because some flights were overbooked, including my own. After grabbing a tuna roll and a Coke (£10) I went to my gate and queued for the flight to Chicago. I’m on the plane now, but we still haven’t taken off yet, it’s already half an hour late. When I was as ascending the rear steps to the 757 I saw what looked like a dent where the tail plane attaches to the body of the aircraft, I’m hoping it’s not important!

The second leg from Keflavik to O’Hare airport has n Chicago took about six hours. I watched The Accountant starring Ben Affleck, which was a really good action movie about an autistic accountant who is also a deadly assassin. It wasn’t like Rainman!

Martin met me in arrivals at about 8 pm local time, and we drove back to his house in Clarendon Hills. It is the highest point between Chicago and the Mississippi, at a scary two hundred feet! We stuffed our faces at a local pub, I started as I meant to go on with a brisket sandwich with onion rings, American cuisine at its finest!

 

I went to bed at 11.30, which was 5.30 am London time. It was a very long night day.

The weather was quite iffy in Gartmore, as it had been for the last few days in Scotland. So hiking up a mountain and getting sucked into a bog was not the order of the day. I mean, who wants to get sucked into a bog? So we drove a couple of miles to Aberfoyle, the local tourist trap, and had a walk for a few miles round there. It was damp and woody, and uppy and downy. Here's some thistles, they are the national flower of Scotland, nice.

Walking in the rain was no fun, so we drove back tae Glasgae, and went to the Glasgow Science Centre. We went in expecting a science museum, but it turned out to be a science experience centre for kids, like the basement of the actual Science Museum! So we went straight back to the entrance and asked for a refund, and whoopee they gave us one! On Pacific Quay outside of the Science Centre the Waverley was docked. It is the worlds only sea-going paddle steamer, a beautifully preserved ship which is seventy years old. I took a group of school children on the Waverley when it visited London in 1985, when I was a science teacher. I met Anneka Rice on board when she was a kids TV presenter, I mix so naturally with the rich and famous. Did I tell you about me and Rick Wakeman?

After that it rained again, several times. We dropped the car off at Europcar (in the rain) and got a taxi to our next AirBnB which is in the basement of Fortrose Mansion overlooking a cricket ground in the West End.

On the recommendation of our hostess Christine we went for dinner at Roastit Bubbly Jocks Bistro on Dumbarton Road. The food was modern Scottish, and by 'eco was it good. It also gets the prize for the daftest name name for a restaurant.
I devoured and thoroughly enjoyed:
Whitebait and tartare sauce
Six hour slow roast beef with roast veg and Yorkshires
Mango cheesecake with mango sorbet
Orange dessert wine
It was the best meal we have had in Scottyland. The chef, Frank, was a very genial and good humoured and had very very good taste in music. He had a great playlist going on his music system, every tune was a goody. All in all it was the edible highlight of our trip north.

The weather forecast was dire, it wasn't a day for country walks or anything in the great outdoors. So we took the easy way out thand went to another castle. That's the great thing about Scotland, there is always another castle to visit. Stirling Castle is one of e samethe best, the seat of the Scottish Royal family for three hundred years. It sits on top of a craggy hill and dominates the small city of of Stirling. It has been besieged many times by the English, and was a military fort until the sixties.

Some of the principal rooms have been beautifully restored and have had many millions of pounds spent on them, it is the Scottish equivalent to Windsor Castle. The Royal apartments are beautifully colourful, restored to how they looked in the 16th century at the time of James V. There are some amazing tapestries which are copies of originals which are now in a museum in New York. The copies took thirteen years to weave and cost £2,000,000.

There are some pretty streets in the old town of Stirling, old stone buildings built when the Stuart kings ruled over just Scotland, before they also became Kings of England. But the only rest of Stirling is the same as any other British city, nothing I would want to return to.

One thing about Scotland that is quite annoying is that most places shut at 5pm, the shops, the cafes, the tourist attractions. I suppose after 5 they all go to the pub or chip shop.

During our second breakfast we chatted to the Dutch ladies who were also staying at Tigh Bhan (pronounced Tie Van). They had travelled a lot, and really liked London, ladies of taste and distinction. It was raining again, but this time it hardly stopped. So indoor activity was the order of the day, and what better way to start than to go inside of a mountain. Ben Cruachan is a 3,600 foot mountain on the shore of Loch Awe, which has been turned into an awesome pump-storage hydro-electric power station. a natural corrie on the mountain side was dammed and turned into a reservoir. Then tunnels were excavated through the black granite to a massive turbine hall a thousand metres into the mountain. Water from the reservoir is used to turn massive turbines which drive generators making electricity. There is enough water to run for fourteen hours at full power, the water runs into Loch Awe. At night, when electricity is very cheap, the same turbines are used to pump water back up into the reservoir! The main use of the Hollow Mountain is to produce electricity very quickly, it can be switched on in two minutes at times of peak demand. So when there is an interval in a football match and millions of people put the electric kettle on, extra electricity can be produced on demand. The tour took us by mini bus into the power station to show us the generating hall, with its four massive generators sitting above the turbines. This amazing piece of engineering was built between 1959 and 1965 and was opened by the Queen.

Having got into the industrial groove, we went to an old blast furnace next w went to Bonawe Furnace. It's an 18th century blast furnace on the shores of Loch Etive. It used charcoal from the local forests to heat the furnace, and power for the bellows was provided by a waterwheel. Vast amounts of timber were used, two tons of iron needed two tons of charcoal, which is a huge amount of wood.

A few miles down the road we stopped for lunch at the Inverawe Smokehouse, a place that smokes all sort of foodstuffs. It has a great cafe, and we had their chowder for lunch. It was very expensive (£7.95 each) but was undoubtedly the best smoked haddock chowder I have ever, ever eaten. Basically it as smoked haddock cooked in cream, delicious!

The weather was very wet, so we headed south towards our next destination at Gartmore. There were many beautiful lochs and mountains, but the views were often covered by rain and clouds. There are a huge amount of mountains and lochs in Scotland, it really makes the Lake District look small.

Our next AirBnB is in Gartmore, a small 18th century planned village which is basically one street. We ate a good dinner at the only pub, the Black Bull, and then went back to our accommodation at Elgin House. Our hosts Jacky and Paul are both orchestral musicians, very friendly and generous with their malt whisky.

After stuffing our faces with a full English at the BnB, we went a few miles north to the village of Glencoe. It is a two-horse town, without the horses. There is almost nothing to see there, so we went straight through to a forest park and had a walk in the woods. It was undemanding and very pretty. We fancied a coffee and went to the Glencoe Visitors centre, and had some truly terrible coffee, but the soup and scone was much better. The exhibition about the Glencoe Massacre was very interesting, the story about McDonalds Vs Campbell's had nothing to do with catering but was all to do with the Clan rivalries and government power.

Glencoe it's self is a beautiful glaciated valley, with streams cascading down the side and mists swirling across the summits. It was raining when we drove through, which somehow made it feel more powerful. I almost expected an army of Orcs to burst out a cave and charge down the mountain side!

As we drove away the rain dried up, and we crossed Loch Leven and caught the ferry at Corran to cross over Loch Linhe to go over to Ardamurchan. We didn't know what to expect, but it turned out to be the best part of our holiday so far. The scenery is a spectacular combination of mountains, lochs, rivers and sea, with another great view round ever corner. The roads are mostly single carriage way with passing places, which kept Julie on her toes pulling in every few minutes. The road goes around the Ardnamurchan region, which is the furthest part west of the British mainland.

The sun came out and the views were outstanding, we kept seeing places that looked like Cornwall, the Lake District, British Columbia and New Zealand! Our final destination was Arisaig which is on the road north to Mallaig. It has some lovely white sandy beaches and blue sea, which reminded me of Whitsand Bay.

After that it was a dash east down the A830 to Fort William to get some dinner. It ain't a pretty town. The high street is full of all manner of tourist tat shops, and the sea front is a dual carriageway. It does have a Wetherspoon's, and as you know, dear reader, I enjoy a good-value dinner. After a lamb shank and two pints of Deucher's IPA, I viewed Fort William much more favourably.
So in summary, if you visit Argyle, don't miss Ardnamurchan, it won't disappoint you, bit Fort William will.

It was pissing down when we left Glasgow this morning. When I awoke I looked out of the window and saw people in coats with brollys, a very reliable indicator of rain. We got a cab to Europcar and collected our new Corsa. Julie drove and I navigated, using a combination of an Aldi road atlas and Google Maps. Our destination was a tiny place caller Duror, half way between Oban and Fort William. It too me a while to work out the best route to get there because the Argyle coast is very complicated. It looks like a normal county that has been torn to pieces and then thrown up into the air to land randomly. The region to the north west of Glasgow is all lochs, islands and peninsulas with a few small towns.

Leaving Glasgow along the M8 we crossed the Erskine Bridge (an impressive cable-stayed construction) and had a look at Dumbarton. Julie's brother Ian had lent us his Scottish National Trust cards, so we went to see Dumbarton Castle. It sits on a tall volcanic plug, like Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh, and has been a fort for fifteen hundred years. It's a steep climb up to the top, but the views over the Clyde and Dumbarton make it very worthwhile. The rain stopped and Scotland turned from monotone to colour once again, as though BBC 2 had just been switched on in 1965

The A82 took us up the side of Loch Lomond, the biggest freshwater lake in Britain. We stopped briefly at Luss, which is a small tourist trap village with a big coach park. At Tarbet we turned eat along the A83, and the landscape became much more mountainous and interesting. Basically it looked just like the Shortbread tins, we even saw some shaggy cows with big horns. The road took us all the way down Loch Fyne, which is an actual loch and not a made up place for selling fish. The sun shone and Scotland looked as it does in guide books, which is what we had come for. The road was very good, and Julie enjoyed the driving while I looked out of the window, an excellent division of labour.

All the villages have unusual names, many of them unpronounceable for a soft Southerner. My favourite was Lochgilphead, which was at the head of Loch Gilph, From there we headed north up the A812 to Oban, which is a small town but a major transport hub for the region. Being in a fishing port, a fishy dinner beckoned, and we chose the Fishouse restaurant. The food was superb, I had haddock chowder to start and seafood pasta as my main. Both were creamy with lots of tasty fish, I would highly recommend it!

From Oban it was just half an hour north up the coast to our next AirBnB in Duror, Tigh Bahn. Our room is about a quarter of the size of the last one, but is cozy and very colourful. We have smuggled in some excellent Merlot from Morrisons in Dumbarton, the perfect accompaniment to blogging.

Glasgow is a big city with a lot to offer. On our first (and only) full day we hunted down Culture, grabbed it with both hands and gave it a big fat kiss.
Our accommodation is in the West End of Glasgow, the hip area close to the University, which was established in 1451. A short walk through streets of beautiful Victorian tenements is the Hunterian Museum. Within the museum is the former home of Charles Rennie Mackintosh – sort of. The actual house was demolished in the sixties because it was subsiding into old mine workings. So the complete interior was stripped out and put into a rather nasty looking concrete extension to the Hunterian art gallery. Admission is by a guided tour from the gallery. Our guide was enthusiastic and engaging, and told us in some detail about the three rooms which make up this reproduction house. Mackintosh was a designer, architect and artist who did his best work at the end of the 19th century. He is to Glasgow what Gaudi is to Barcelona and Frank Lloyd Wright is to Chicago, a pioneering modernist who is still very relevant today.

Half a mile down the hill is Kelvingrove Museum, a magnificent palace of Victorian Gothic and a fabulous place to visit. The building is reminiscent of the V&A and the Natural History Museum, a huge an beautiful exhibition of art, taxidermy and with bizarre sculpted heads suspended from the ceiling. There is more CRM stuff and some gorgeous paintings by Scottish Colourists, who were influenced by the French Impressionists. All that culture makes one peckish, and just as I was buying sandwiches the awesome pipe organ started playing some Handel (or possibly Bach). So we sat and munched our sarnies while being entertained by the organist who played with his feet as well as his hands, a TV screen showed his feet in action.
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Tiring of being informed and educated we walked down Sauchiehall Street towards the city centre. A worthwhile diversion was to the Tenement House which is a preserved Victorian tenement apartment, shown as it would have looked seventy years ago. It has four rooms and is mostly let by gas mantles, and there is a bed in the cupboard in the kitchen! It gives a great insight into how most Glaswegians lived until about fifty years ago.
Glasgow is set out on a grid like American cities, so it's quite easy to get around. Buchanan Street is like a pedestrianised Oxford Street, lots of upmarket shops in big sandstone buildings. Princes Square is a very pretty shopping centre with lovely art nouveau stairs.
The weather forecast is for rain for the rest of the week, so Julie bought a new waterproof coat to prepare for the worst. We paid a brief visit to a design centre called the Lighthouse, and saw yet more CRM stuff, this guy gets everywhere in Glasgow! The "viewing" platform is less interesting than the top of the multi-storey car park in Hounslow, don't go there!

Getting a bit tired of walking we took advantage of our Meercat Movies deal and went to see Dunkirk. It is thrilling, nail-biting, harrowing and uplifting. You feel like you are in the cockpit with the Spitfire pilot, and in the sea with the floundering soldiers. Dinner was at a very cheap and cheerful Yates, I recommend the Echo Falls Chardonnay at a very reasonable nine quid. It was the perfect balance to a day that was slightly culture-heavy, too much for my poor nerdy brain.

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.

Istanbul is the only city on two continents, so Tommy thought we should visit Asia as well as Europe. We walked down the hill past Aya Sofia to Eminonu to catch the ferry over the Bosphorus to Kadikoy. It is a 20-minute ride across, avoiding the container ship and tankers going between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. It costs less than a quid, a real bargain for an interesting boat trip.

Our first stop was a disused railway station at Haydarpasa which was suggested in a misleading travel blog. The imposing Victorian building was closed for restoration so we couldn’t go inside. There was some kind of book fair going on, all the books were Turkish, so not much good for me!

Old Haydarpasa station

 

Close by was a bus station with cute little buses which look designed to appeal to 8-year-old girls, they should be called “My Little Bus”

So we walked into the town and after some hunting using Google maps, found a really vibrant district of markets and cafes. I ate a monster burger and chips for lunch, it was not Turkish but then neither am I. A shop selling second-hand albums kept Tommy happy, while Julie and I found an excellent bar playing good music and ordered an Efes Malt.

Mmm beer…

This is not a tourist district like Sultanahmet so it feels more authentic, I like it here. Walking down the hill towards the port we came across a very lively market full of stalls selling fruit, kitchen tools, nuts and glistening fresh fish. It’s the best market we have come across, all useful stuff, unlike the Grand Bazaar which just sells souvenirs.

This side of Istanbul doesn’t feel radically different to the European side, it is really one huge city of 14 million people.

I ate my own weight in meat at dinner on our last night in Istanbul, a huge mixed kebab.  I’m now farting so much I can hover like a helicopter. There are many restaurants in Sultanahmet, and few of them are really busy. The waiters stand out in the street trying to attract your attention, but there is a lot of competition and not enough tourists.

As we left our hotel this morning, the owner of the carpet shop next door asked us to go and see his kilims and carpets. Visitor numbers to Turkey have dropped by 40% so shop keepers are desperate to sell to the people who do visit. Tommy asked how much a kilim (about 80cm by 60cm) and the guy said £200, roughly ten times more than Tommy expected! There are many more carpet shops than buyers, all I have bought is a belt and a fridge magnet!

Topkapi Palace is only a half a mile from the hotel, close to Aya Sofia, and was the centre of power of the Ottoman Empire for 400 years. It’s a collection of buildings surrounded by a wall that was occupied by up to 10,000 people at a time. That included the Sultan, his extended family, the civil service, the eunochs and many other staff.  Up to 1300 people worked in the kitchen!

There are many buildings, but hardly any furniture apart from big beds. Most surfaces are covered in beautiful tiles or inlay made from coloured stone and mother of pearl. The styles are a mix of traditional Turkish, rococo and baroque, sometimes in the same room.

Large parts of the palace are being restored, so there are lots of hoardings closing off areas with banging going on behind.

The gardens are fragrant with roses, and there are wonderful views over the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus.

After Topkapi we went back to Sarnic to put our feet up for a while. Afterwards we walked round the lovely Gulhane Park, which was a garden of Topkapi until 1912.

Using a combination of the Lonely Planet guide and Google Maps we found the Lokum Cafe and had a big fat Efes beer. Walking through back streets we came across the Incir Limon cafe and ate delicious chicken kebabs with a mixed meze and beer, it was the perfect Turkish meal.

Everyone has been so polite and friendly here, the Turks are lovely people!