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This blog will be a synopsis of our walk of the West Highland Way in July of 2022.
This was the trip planned in 2020 but delayed with COVID issues. Our group has changed over the course of the two years.
My wife and I and our friends Jo Finestead and Norma Wiebe and Sandy Clements have walked the Coast to Coast and a few other treks together the last 10-15 years so we will see how age and the terrain treat us on this walk.
We left our new home in San Antonio at Blue Skies of Texas, a CCRC, and traveled by car to Dallas-Ft Worth where we stayed with cousin Chuck who had hoped to make the trip but outrageously high airfares forced him to withdraw. Then on to cousins in Fairfield Bay, AR; cousins in Nashville, TN; and, then on to see the granddaughters in Cary, NC. (new note) I have been remiss in not stating that my Columbia EMBA friend allowed us to park our car at his home in Raleigh in exchange for our using the Synofit capsules for help with arthritic knees. See James@synofit.com
Our original plane tickets on American
were $7400 economic, steerage fare. Our friend Norma travels on United so we looked at avoiding Heathrow and could fly from IAD to EDI on United directly. Saving a couple of thousand dollars. Boarded plane on 29th and arrived on 30th of June. Had easy tram from airport to Haymarket Station then train trip to Glasgow and then a tough walk up the hill to our hotel, toting bags a distance of about 0.7 miles.
The IBIS Hotel is connected with the Novotel and is near Sauchiehall street and the Charing Station still near central Glasgow.
1 July 2022, we meet our friends Jo and Sandy for coffee at their hotel about 0915. It is the Maldron Hotel where they could get a triple room for three single ladies. Unfortunately, Norma flying standby on United did not get on so they had the room for three being paid for by only the two of them. We got them off to Milngavie where we will start the walk on the West Highland Way on the 3rd.
The two of us then had breakfast and started on the Rick Steves Walking tour of Glasgow. First stop was not on
the tour but the very interesting Royal Scotland Fusiliers Museum. This gives the history of the regiments from their origin through all the wars and police keeping missions around the world. We spent about an hour then went on the tour backwards visiting the Tenement museum (#12 on the tour) first. The apartment was owned and lived in from the 1900s until it became the museum owned by the Scottish Trust in the 1980s. Several buildings on the tour were designed and built by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. The Glasgow school of art was being renovated several years ago when it had a fire so only a few of the sandstone walls appear through the scaffolding surrounding the new building being built. But we did stop for Tea and a late lunch at the Willows Tea Room.
Continuing after our lunch, which we finished around 5 PM, we walked past the many old buildings and classic architectural styles back down the hill to the Queen Station and George Park where we started from yesterday. Photos were taken and the narrative about the buildings and the walk is in the Glasgow section of the Rick Steves Snapshot of Scotland travel book.
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Cam
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Hello Harlan and Karen. Great to hear from you. Give us a call if you’re ever up in our neck of the woods.