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Thursday, july 8'th
Leaving Keswick. Nice place. Bus to
Penrith and a Virgin-train to Glasgow.
From Glasgow Central walk al the way to Smith's
Hotel. It's further away than I thought, so I should have picked a taxi
instead.Finally I reach the hotel, the most lousy on this trip.
Then it's time for taking a look at
Glasgow and a little shopping. Plenty of shopping-opportunities in this city.
Also time for a museum-visit. The Tenement
House is an old flat, now converted into a small museum. It is supposed to
look like a flat used to look about 100 years ago. I get a nice chat with one of
the people taking care of the museum. He is a great-great something to the one
that used to live here, and whose will it was that the flat should be made into
a museum. And I even understand what he tells me - this can sometimes be
difficult in Scotland, where they use this strange scottish accent.
Dinner at a mexican restaurant close
to my hotel. Expensive - and bad food - I should have sticked to pub-grub.
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Friday, july 9'th
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Getting up awful early to take a
trip to Arran Island
and Brodick
Castle. The train leaves Glasgow Central for Androssan at 8.30 am. That
takes an hour, and from there its another hout by boat to Brodick on Arran
Island.
In Brodick a bus is ready to take me - and others - to Brodick Castle. A nice
old castle, which you can also see from inside. There are plenty of guides
around - one in each room. And a nice park surronds the castle. The garden staff
is chinese. That's probably the cheapest.
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The trip to the castle was not as
long as supposed, so instead of taking the bus back I take a walk. There is one
of the many "footpaths" all the way to Brodick. The path crosses one
of the many fine golf-courses in this area. Huge signs saying "Danger"
suggest that it's a good idea to be a little careful here.
The boat leaves at 2 pm and arrives in Androssan at 3. But here there are
problems. There is no train to Glasgow. There has been an accident on the line,
so the trains are cancelled. Instead they put us in a taxi and takes us to a
different station. It takes a while, and it's 5 before I reach Glasgow again.
I walk back to the hotel. That's
easier than using the absolutely hopeless system of Glasgow busses. There are
severel companys running, and they all have different fares. There's no ticket
you can use for all the busses, and in downtown Glasgow you have to guess which
busses stop where. There are no signs telling when the busses are running and
all the busses seem to be leftovers from WW II. Isn't deregulation a good
thing???
In the evening it's time for a
lovely walk in my nearby park called Kelvingrove - nice place.
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Saaturday, july 10'th
Its a day for golf today. It's the
third day of the Scottish
Open at the Lock
Lomond-course. Train to Balloch and then bus to the golfcourse. The trip
takes about 1½ hour, so I'm at the golfcourse at 11.
I would like to see the whole
golfcourse and also follow some of the stars, so I choose to follow a pair of golfers for 3-4 holes, and then fall behind to the next ones. I start of with
Ernie Els and Lee Westwood. Not a bad start. Later I follow scottish player
Andrew Coltart and spaniard Miguel Martin, and then Michael Campbell and Eduardo
Romero. For my own play it's nice to see a player like Romero make a mess out of
of very simple shot, that runs 20 meters forward and into a bunker. The
scorecard-woman is just beside me, and we agree that even we could have done
that better. It's a double-bogey for Romero, and he looks very
"gloomy". His answer is on the other hand better than I could have
done. He scores a birdie on the next two holes.
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From the 11'th hole I follow Peter
Hedblom and Thomas Bjørn. Thomas is -9 and is on a shared 6-8 place 6 strokes
behind the leader. He plays excellent and the few holes that I watch him. He
get's a nice birdie on 14, a dog-leg par 4, where he crosses the shrubbery with
the tee-shot and lands the ball right on the green. 315 meters - that's
something. He is close to an eagle on that hole, and with a bit more luck he
could easily have scored 3 or 4 more birdies than the one he got, on the holes
that I watched him.
The day finishes at 5.30. Thomas is
still no. 6-8, now at -10. Marcus Fraser and Gregory Havret is the leaders at
-14.
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The course is extremely nice. Very
spectacular and some impressive surroundings with Loch Lomond on one side and
nice highland-mountains on the other. And watching these players is great. They
sure know how to play this game. But it is kind of hard of following the
development of the whole tournament. That is in fact easier on TV.
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Sunday, July 11'th
Actually plans was to go to Glengoyne to take a look at a whisky-destillery.
But when I get to the bus-terminal I find out that no. 10 is only running every
2 hours - and it has just left.
So plans must be changed into some
Glasgow-sightseeing. I take the official hop-on-hop-off sightseeing bus. My
first hop-off is at Glasgow Cathedral. Here you also find a few nice and small
museums and the oldest house in Glasgow.
Next hop-off is at "The
Barras", Glasgows huge flea market. Her they sell everthing. I find a
weird music-shops and buys 2 bootlegs, that look quite suspect.
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Back on the bus we pass all the
sights of Glasgow - not that many to be honest. The bus also stops in front of
Smith's Hotel, so here I hop-off for the last time. I'm just in time to see
Thomas Levet from France win the Scottish Open on TV.
Later another walk. First a place
for dinner. A nice newly opened italian restaurant with good and cheap food.
Then a walk up Byres Road - a nice little street with restaurants and bars.
Byres Road ends at the Botanical garden. Here I find a secret path along River
Kelvin, all the way back to Kelvingrove Park and my hotel. A very nice walk
along the river - and I haven't seen it any of my tour-guides. So it's a little
like my own invention.
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Monday, july 12'th
Leaving with a GNER-train at 8 am
from Glasgow Central. The train terminates at London Kings Cross at 2 pm - about
40 minutes late. Then to my nice hotel Luna
& Simone close to Victoria.
I haven't got much time in London.
So I take bus no. 24 to Trafalger Square, and some walking around in
tourist-London.
At 7 I head for Her
Majesty's Theathre to see the "Phantom
of the Opera". Nice piece in the old theater. The story is trivial.
Something about a ghost in the parisian opera, that falls in love with one of
the singers, that on the other hand loves and bla bla bla........But the scenery
is great, and hell they can sing
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Tuesday, july 13'th
Exit UK. The cheap train to Gatwick
- a trained London-traveller knows that there is no need to pay 12 £ for the
Express, when you can pay 8 £ for Southerns train that is almost as fast.
Departure for Billund at 1.35 pm -
actually the plane is early, so we arrive in Billund 20 minutes ahead of
schedule. And now it's a good thing that Billund Airport is so tiny. I can
actually reach a bus that leaves 10 minutes before the plane was supposed to
land.
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