A visit to Glasgow Necropolis

In August last year, Little She Bear and I visited Glasgow Cathedral and we decided that day that one day we would come back and walk up to the necropolis. Yesterday we did that. This pic is taken from the necropolis looking towards the cathedral and Glasgow Royal Infirmary. More of that later but first here are some of the murals we saw on buildings of Strathclyde University as we walked up from the station after alighting form the train and after coffee in George Square in the sunshine.

These two were my favourites, I think, though I liked them all. What a brilliant way to deal with an old brick wall!

Views from high up in the necropolis were great.

The mausoleums were imposing.

And the sky was blue all day!

We enjoyed the plants, including this very sycamore-like acer whose leaves were an unusual colour, the ferns and mare's-tail growing out of cracks between stones...

...the beautiful blossom of
hawthorn and rowan...

...the light through large trees and the hundreds of tiny and not so tiny ash trees growing everywhere. Let's hope that Scotland's ash trees will show some resistance to ash dieback and revive woods throughout the UK in due course.

young ash between monuments

Some of the gated mausoleums were amazing. I took a couple of photos for @GarethsGates.

Then, towards the end of our wander, I spotted this. This Arthur Booth was not my great uncle from Featherstone, who played cricket for Yorkshire during the time when only Yorkshiremen could qualify for that, but it was nice to see the name and be reminded of some family history.

She Bear and I think we will go again some time with notebooks and pencils so that we can write down names we have never come across before. There were some very unusual ones.

But before then we will go on a trip to Dalreoch and do some exploring there. There is a maritime museum there and plenty more history. There is also, I've just discovered, a tea plantation!

Oh! Wait! It seems the tea plantation called Dalreoch is at Dunfermline. Oh well, there's another outing.

Little She-Bear and I went a-wandering near Aberfoyle

The first stop was a coffeeshop stop. I'm testing as many Empire Biscuits as I can get at. I'm getting so skilled that I can test them even by eye nowadays and the ones in the coffeeshop we stopped at had  icing that was too hard, I could tell just by looking, so I had a vanilla slice instead. She-Bear had carrot cake. We sampled each other's choices as well, natch. Both efforts got quite high marks out of ten but weren't as good as we could make at home or the ones we had eaten as kids made by local bakers. Ah well... but you have to try. Nothing ventured, etc.

The next stop was at a gate just before the bridge over the Endrick Water on the road between Drymen and Aberfoyle.

Because it was an interesting gate.

Gate post

A true friend is someone who will stop, turn her car and go back to dump you at a gate, get the car out of the way so you can photograph said gate, then go and find somewhere to park off the road, and wait while you wander over a bridge peering at mosses and lichens on the bridge stonework. The next time we are on that road I may need to be the driver so that we can stop, get out and go to explore the bridge underpinnings as well.

Another gate or two thrust themselves upon my notice before we went for a walk along the river.

mossy gate 2

It was not a bright day but we enjoyed the autumnal colours of the larches and cloud covered hills and of the grasses on the floodplains of the River Forth.

Part of our walk was along an old railway track. We didn't realise this at first so certain objects were slightly puzzling

until we saw this and the blue information notice at the end,            
and then it all made sense.

There were some lovely things along the track–

–fungi on trees over the river and on carved owls, beautiful red berries we didn't recognise, pools containing and reflecting natural beauty,

and bryophytically enhanced gates! 

    Definitely a successful wander, we thought!

Old gates, new gates, red gates, blue gates

Old gate

New gate (peace gate)

Red gate

Blue gate

<< Knobless, once lockable gate

Sprung gate

Fancy gate

                Peeling gate with ivy-leaved toadflax

Wonky gate

Some gates, chimmneys and doors in Derbyshire

 

The entrance to an allotment