The University of Glasgow was founded in 1451 making it the fourth oldest university in the UK and second oldest in Scotland. They do run tours of the building for visitors but they weren’t running on the day I went so I did the self-guided tour which can be found on the university’s website.
The main reason I wanted to visit Glasgow last October was to go to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum and it turned out to be an even better experience than I’d been expecting, in fact I ended up spending most of the day there. The building itself is beautiful inside and out, designed in a Spanish Baroque style in red sandstone by John W. Simpson and E. J. Milner Allen and opened in 1901.
2020 has been a write off in a lot of ways, particularly for travelling, so on the weekend I should have been attending my third Open House London I headed out with my Dad to Colwick Country Park for some walking amongst nature which a lot of people have been appreciating more and more this year. I’m lucky to have a nice back garden to sit in and Nottingham has a lot of green spaces that are walkable from where I live, but a place like Colwick Country Park requires a car to get to for me as I’m still avoiding public transport right now.
We’ve had foxes in our garden before but during lockdown we had a more frequent visitor than usual in the case of this lovely fox with an injured back leg. At first I assumed he (he’s rolled over onto his back so I’m fairly certain it’s a male) had hurt his leg in an accident but doing some research it actually seems likely this has been caused by mange – other symptoms he has are constant scratching, slitted eyes, being out during the day and a noticeable lack of fear around humans. He seems pretty healthy otherwise and is certainly moving about fine (at one point he jumped right over our pond) and I found a charity (Wildlife Aid) where I could buy some mange treatment and add it to some food for him – though keeping very much in mind to be careful he doesn’t become reliant on me/humans as a source of food. I’ll keep you posted about how this works out, but for now some of my favourite shots of our photogenic visitor.
Gedling Country Park is built on the site of Gedling Colliery which started producing coal in 1902 and closed in 1991. It was opened in 2015 as a 580 acre park with lots of open space, a choice of walks of varying difficulty and two viewing platforms that on a bright day allow for views across to Lincolnshire and Leicestershire.
I’m not a big fan of modern art as regular readers will know but Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art is free to explore and I was intrigued by the history of the building itself. The gallery was opened in 1966 but the building dates from 1778 when it was the townhouse of William Cunninghame a tobacco merchant and slave trader.
Today for the first time since March I ventured into Nottingham City Centre in order to photograph the 10 owls that make up the Wise Owl Walk. It was quite a good work out as the owls are spread out around the city centre and I walked there and back to avoid using public transport. The owls are really well designed and it’s a nice way of getting people back into the city centre, though personally I didn’t stick around other than to take photographs which is probably what I would have done pre-pandemic as well! You can find a map of the trail to download here.
The Lighthouse is Scotland’s National Centre for Design and Architecture. Originally it was the offices of the Glasgow Herald newspaper, designed by the architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh as his first public commission and completed in 1895.
Provand’s Lordship was built in 1471 and is one of Glasgow’s few surviving medieval buildings located not far from the Cathedral. It was built by Andrew Muirhead, the Bishop of Glasgow, as part of the then St Nicholas’ Hospital.
Glasgow Cathedral is the oldest cathedral on mainland Scotland, the present building being consecrated in 1197. It’s a large impressive stone building with very high ceilings next to the Necropolis.
