July 4th Moffat - Glasgow

Rain kept off and we cycled up a long hill out of Moffat, which seemed a rather old - fashioned town. The daft B&B owner said it was all uphill to Glasgow. In fact it was not a difficult ride. There were long slow hills and relatively little traffic. The cycle path was pretty good ,as they were in Lancashire and Cumbria; there is a tendency in some places for cycle paths to be a depository of glass, parked cars and areas where tarmac is breaking up. We both felt a little leaden- legged this morning. Linda atributed this to the disgustingly weak coffee we had at breakfast! Eventually we found a great hotel just off our B road and we had somedelicious coffee.We both felt restored and cycled on - although Glasgow sign - posted said 25 miles away we started cycling through places that felt like Glasgow - overspill. As it started to rain as we got to Hamilton we had a coffee at a Holiday Inn and ate our bacon sandwiches! We made it to Uddingston ( where Christina spent some of her childhood- she always said we moved out of Glasgow to Uddingston but until today Jeff thought it was just a suburb) We quickly found the Clyde Cycleway but in somr respects it was disappointing as for the first couple of miles we had to keep stopping because of broken glass strewn over the cycle paths. We were amazed as to how rural it all was and what an interesting river, with numerous rapids, the Clyde is. But we felt the path was unkempt and little used. We saw no more than two or three other cyclists and a similar numbers of walkers. It was a very long ride from Uddingston to Glasgow centre. We had already been warned by the police and by a man in the street that the Orange Order Parade was on today and we shoeld be aware of drunke gangs. As we got to the city centre we came across the March. It was enormous stretching for miles with some 90 bands. It was in one way good to see so many Scots marching behind the Union flag but nevertheless one felt uncomfortable particularly looking at some of the supporters! We had to stop eventually as cycleway blocked by so many people coming from the opposite direction. We had a couple of incidents with drunken youths which frightend Linda but somehow we managed not to get into any serious bother. The Kelvingrove Hotel is very good ( 58 miles)