Over a week ago we visited Glasgow and of course I took some pictures.

This extravagant confection of a building is the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.

It was constructed in order to house Glasgow’s collection of Art works and was partly funded by using the surplus resulting from the Glasgow International Exhibition of 1888.

Another such Exhibition was held in 1901 to celebrate the opening of the Art Gallery which has been a favourite haunt of the Glasgow public ever since. It was much missed when closed for refurbishment for a few years recently.

I’d never really noticed the details above the windows before.

Each of the gallery type windows has the arms of a Scottish county above it. Further along past the (back) entrance is the one for Dumbartonshire. Note the elephant and castle.

A persistent urban myth is that the Art Gallery’s plans were misread and that it was built the wrong way round (the main entrance faces the Kelvin river and not the west end of Argyle Street) and the architect is supposed to have committed suicide as a result. All complete nonsense.

At the time the road (not Dumbarton Road as the link above has it; that starts just beyond the Kelvin, to the right of the Kelvin Hall in my picture below) would not have been considered so important and the view to the Kelvin out over Kelvingrove Park would have taken precedence.

The later (1927) Kelvin Hall, now mainly a sports venue, is just over the road from the Art Gallery.

There are some stylistic similarities between the two buildings.

Another fruit of my “Doon The Watter” trip.

This shot was taken from the south Bank of the Clyde almost at Langbank. The tide was out, showing the rocky foreshore.

Dumbarton FC’s stadium is immediately behind the Castle Rock as you look at it from here.

This photo shows a cloud shrouded Ben Lomond (the only Munro I have ever climbed) in the background.

There actually is an angle, just west of Langbank, I glimpsed it on my way back down later in the day but I was on a motorway and couldn’t stop, where the Castle Rock does look like a recumbent elephant. Hence the Elephant And Castle pub in Dumbarton High Street – now closed I believe – and the football club badge. I had always thought it was Dumbuck that was supposed to be elephant-like but it is the Rock after all.

This picture shows the Rock from Greenock. I seem by accident to have caught a seabird on the wing.