Day 1 - Trains, scrabble and robots.

Well, the first day of our Scottish adventure finally dawned. Today has been a very long day and finds us in Glasgow.

Tumbling out of bed at stupid o'clock in the morning to catch a train for London was a necessary evil in order to catch our train to Glasgow from Kings Cross. So after a quick ride across central London, bizarrely much of which was spent following in the sweet smelling wake of the same dustbin lorry, we easily got our bikes onto the train into their 1st rate bike racks, and our backsides into our 1st class seats.

This left us with over five and a half hours of train journey time to kill. We spent much of this playing the "pocket" scrabble game I have bought along specially. For the first time I lost horribly to Rosie, and I'm going to plead tiredness as an excuse.

On arrival north of the border we started this cycling holiday as we mean to go on. I got a puncture 20 metres from the front of Glasgow Central station and had to pull over for repairs, right in front of a bus queue. Fun!

Having gotten ourselves installed in our accommodation we thought we'd do a bit of exploring. Having already sampled the delights of central Glasgow we thought we'd try going further afield. There's an X-scape leisure complex at Braehead, so we thought we'd check it out and try to find some dinner. This involved sampling the Glasgow underground (aka the "Clockwork Orange" - because it's, err, orange) which feels like a toy version of the London underground, with its tiny trains.

Braehead turned out to be a cloned shopping centre, and a nice reminder of the world we will be leaving behind us for the next two weeks. Crowds of recreational shoppers, rows of identical fashion shops, chain restaurants and mindless consumerism at its zenith. This didn't stop us shamelessly having dinner at Frankie & Benny's however, as we doubt we'll be seeing one or its like in the Highlands.

The highlight at Braehead was the awesome robot arm ride in the entrance way to X-scape. It's basically a pair of seats on the end of a maniacal flailing robot arm that moves in the most unpredictable way. We couldn't resist giving it a whirl, literally, and I have to say it was definitely one of the most intense fairground rides I've ever been on. My head was full of blood and spinning for about 5 minutes afterward.

Best of all was the ride attendant who, on seeing my t-shirt, gave me half our money back and told me that Monty Python fans ride half price! I love this t-shirt.