MILD ROVER: Clever Ideas for Smart Travellers

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My travel Waterloo on the trail of Wellington

There can be few more ignominious failures for a self-styled seasoned traveller than falling for the marketing exaggerations of service providers in your home town.

The last time, we were flying from Southampton to Glasgow, my adopted Scottish home and my favourite city in the UK.  Yes, Edinburgh is very nice with its castle and fancy-dan festival.  But its streets of the capital are swarming with tourists, herded in droves from one café where Harry Potter was allegedly written to the next.

Give me the gritty and gutsy streets of Glasgow any time, where people dressed up as fictional characters aren’t hustling for ten-pound selfies, and the statue of the Duke of Wellington has a traffic cone – witches hat, to you – permanently plonked on his head. 

This iconoclastic crowning, originally a student prank, was declared illegal by Glasgow City Council at one point, a decision that was reversed by public demand. Now it has become such a feature that it is a landmark that appears on official tourist maps.

And, funnily enough, it is the Iron Duke who has brought us to Glasgow on this great European adventure. You may recall that last week we were in Southampton where the University library houses the Wellington archives, as Sue continues her research into Wellington’s life and times for her next book.

As fate would dictate, Glasgow University is home to one of the most vivid accounts of the immediate aftermath of Welllington’s most famous and, as it turned out, final battle.

Curry in a hurry

Glasgow Merchant Thoms Ker was living in Brussels at the time and visited the battlefield on the day after Napoleon was defeated. He wrote a book (by hand) which is now in Glasgow Uni’s archives and madame had to see it.

The flight north was uneventful, if delayed, meaning by the time we got to our hotel, CitizenM, just 200 metres from the Buchanan St station where the airport bus terminates, restaurants were starting to close.

However, local knowledge comes in handy.  The Curry Cottage, just a couple of blocks away, does a fine fish pakora and a salmon prawn curry that would get Wellington’s equestrian statue galloping up Buchanan St if only he could get that damned traffic cone off his head,

It stayed open till 10 pm so we treated ourselves to an Indian feast, eschewing the haggis pakora – and not just because we are pescetarian.

Funny moment: The owner came up and asked if it was my first time.

‘No sir,’ I said. ‘I come here regularly.”  He looked puzzled and embarrassed that he didn’t recognise me.

‘Once a year, every year for the past five,’ I explained

A quick word about CitizenM Hotels (raved about elsewhere in these pages).  Since there are none in Australia or South-East Asia, I’ve never previously been able to justify paying for their CitizenM+ membership which costs AU$180-ish a year.

However, for that you get 15 per cent off everything (except breakfast – a bargain, anyway), including the room rate, non-breakfast food and booze.  You also get to choose the best rooms if they are available and a free late check-out to 2pm.

Since we’d be staying there in Glasgow, London (twice) and Paris, suddenly it made economic sense to pay the membership fee, and yes, it was well worth it.

However, if you think I’m sounding like a savvy traveller, let me introduce you to a little con I fell for that someone should shut down, if only because it gives visitors a bad impression of the city.

Waterloo… again?

I booked a rental car from Budget in advance and the booking form said it could be picked up at Glasgow Central Station which is straight down the hill from the CitizenM.

It’s a con.  There are no longer any car hire firms based at Central Station, although there were, once upon a time. Instead the cars are in a multi-storey car park three blocks away along Waterloo St.

Yes, it would have to be Waterloo.  While Sue was leafing through Ker’s account at Glasgow Uni, I was doing battle with our luggage, a cavalry charge away from where I thought I’d be dropping them off.

Just goes to show, local knowledge is only useful if you keep it updated. And knowing where you’re going counts for nothing if everything has moved when you get there.

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