Other 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.

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.