Things to do in Glasgow

Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow is the most visited museum in Scotland and one of the most visited in the United Kingdom outside London, a magnificent red sandstone building in the Spanish Baroque style that houses one of the finest civic art collections in Britain alongside natural history, arms and armour, and cultural history displays that make it one of the most comprehensive and rewarding museums in the country. The building and its collections are both free to visit, a tradition maintained by Glasgow City Council that reflects the civic ambition with which the institution was founded at the end of the nineteenth century. The building itself, completed in 1901 for the Glasgow International Exhibition, is one of the most impressive civic architectural achievements in Scotland. Its two towers and the elaborate terracotta facades facing the River Kelvin create a composition of considerable grandeur and confidence, and the great central hall within, rising to an ornate barrel-vaulted ceiling, provides a setting worthy of the collections it houses. The Spanish Baroque style, unusual in Glasgow, reflects the broad cultural ambitions of the architects and their clients and gives the building an exotic quality that continues to surprise and delight visitors approaching it from Kelvingrove Park. The art collection contains a remarkable range of Scottish and European painting, including Salvador Dalí's Christ of Saint John of the Cross, acquired controversially by Glasgow in 1952 and now the most discussed and most visited single work in the collection. The Impressionist and Post-Impressionist holdings, the Dutch and Flemish old masters, the French nineteenth-century paintings and the outstanding Scottish collection from the Glasgow Boys and the Scottish Colourists together constitute one of the most distinguished public art collections in the British Isles outside London. The natural history galleries, the arms and armour collection and the Egyptian mummies add breadth to a museum that rewards multiple visits across different sections.

Loch Lomond is the largest freshwater lake in Britain by surface area, a 71-square-kilometre expanse of water that lies at the heart of Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park and provides the most accessible example of Highland scenery for the large population of central Scotland and northern England within comfortable reach of its shores. The loch is one of the most visited natural sites in Scotland and the subject of one of the most famous Scottish songs, whose chorus has made the phrase bonnie banks of Loch Lomond known worldwide. The loch has a geographical character that reflects its position on the Highland Boundary Fault, the geological divide between the Scottish Highlands and Lowlands. The southern end of the loch, broad and island-scattered, lies in the lowland zone and has a gentle, pastoral character with wooded islands and accessible shores. The northern end narrows dramatically as the Highland boundary is crossed and the mountains press in from both sides, creating a quite different character of fjord-like narrowness with steep mountain slopes rising directly from the water's edge. The island of Inchcailloch in the southern loch is a national nature reserve with excellent walking and the remains of a medieval church and burial ground, and the wooded islands scattered across the broader southern section provide boat trips and kayaking destinations in summer. The West Highland Way long-distance walking route follows the eastern shore of the loch for approximately twenty kilometres between Drymen and Inverarnan, providing some of the finest lochside walking available in Scotland. Ben Lomond, rising from the eastern shore to 974 metres as the most southerly Munro in Scotland, provides one of the most popular mountain walks in the country, its relatively accessible ascent from Rowardennan carrying thousands of walkers annually.

The West Highland Way is Scotland's oldest and most celebrated long-distance walking route, running 96 miles from Milngavie on the outskirts of Glasgow to Fort William at the foot of Ben Nevis through some of the finest Highland scenery in the country. Opened in 1980 as the first of Scotland's Great Trails, the route quickly established itself as a classic walking challenge that combines accessibility from Scotland's central belt with a progressive journey into genuinely wild Highland country, the landscape becoming more dramatic and remote with each successive day of walking. The route begins in the suburbs of Glasgow and quickly moves through the farmland and woodland south of Loch Lomond before reaching the loch's southern shore at Drymen and following the eastern bank of the loch northward for approximately 19 miles through one of the finest stretches of loch-side walking in Scotland. The wooded shores of Loch Lomond, the views across the water to the mountains of the western shore and the transition from the relatively gentle southern section of the loch to the increasingly dramatic Highland landscape around Inverarnan mark the route's transition from accessible country walk to genuine Highland journey. Beyond Crianlarich the route crosses the broad, treeless expanse of Rannoch Moor, a high desolate plateau of peat bog and open water that marks the true beginning of the Highland wilderness and provides some of the most dramatically austere walking on the entire route. Glencoe lies just below the northern edge of the moor, its dark volcanic cliffs rising above the valley floor in an atmosphere of considerable power, and the final descent to Fort William through the Great Glen provides views of Ben Nevis on the approach to the journey's end. Most walkers complete the route in seven to nine days, and a well-developed network of accommodation, baggage transfer services and supply points makes the logistics manageable for those without wild camping experience.