Episode 49.5 - Glasgow
Who knew a traffic cone could get me this excited?
Why, hello again there, dear reader!
You may be wondering why this is Episode 49.5. Why the decimal point? Why not just Episode 50?
Great, great question! And that's because I recently had two wonderful legs of my UK trip — Fife, and the Scottish Highlands — and between them, I spent a few hours in Glasgow. In my mind, this trip to Glasgow is a separate, distinct event from those two, worthy of its own mention without distracting from those other trips themselves.
But! I was only in Glasgow for 3 hours, and didn’t want to take up the EXCITING title of “Episode 50” with a short mini post.
Hence, the decimal. What a delightful little invention. And what a delightful little episode, coming right your way!
If this is your first episode and you’re like “what in the world is happening”, start off here.
Wednesday, April 23rd, 2025
After saying bye to James in Edinburgh, I got on another lovely ScotRail train to head toward Glasgow. I had a few hours there before my next train departed north, so I found myself in the lovely little predicament of having a few hours to kill in the second-biggest city in Scotland.
And to be honest, there really wasn’t much to do. Unlike Edinburgh, where there’s a long list of tourist attractions and a popular hike up Arthur’s Seat, Glasgow is just a city where people work and live.
But I’m selling Glasgow too short. It does have a ton of museums, and James recommended that I visit the GoMA (Gallery of Modern Art) during my short stay in town.
So upon arriving in Glasgow, I headed off to the gallery, where I was immediately greeted with the very strange and completely unexpected sight of an orange traffic cone on the head of the Duke of Wellington statue. Wtf.
I had no idea, but apparently this cone thing is world famous, and has been happening for decades. The story goes that in the 80s, some drunk Glaswegians climbed the statue and put the traffic cone up there. The city took it down the next day.
And then some more drunk Glaswegians came and put another cone up. The city took it down again.
This process repeated itself countless times, and eventually, the city decided it was too expensive and too much of a hassle to take the cone down every time and just gave up1. Now the cone is up there permanently, and is occasionally replaced to make sure the Duke’s hat looks refreshed2.
The best part of this entire situation was that because the statue was right in front of the Gallery of Modern Art, I figured this cone thing was the first exhibit on display. Turns out it’s not, and is rather just a part of the city’s fabric and culture. lol. This entire cone thing is wild, and you need to check out the Wikipedia article on this statue ASAP. Such a random and unexpected treasure trove of many, many cone-related stories.
As for the museum itself, it was ok. Nothing is as nice as my E-Wing Gallery, I fear.
The other interesting parts of Glasgow were getting coffee in a renovated subway entrance building (the architecture was cool3) and the subway itself.
Glasgow was the third subway ever built (after London and Budapest), and the only major one that has never expanded. It’s just 15 stops on one ring line, fondly called the “Orange Circle”. In theory, you could just do circles of this metro all day, and basically have a free roller coaster ride. I did a full loop in about 30 minutes, and didn’t have to pay anything since I technically got on and off at the same stop. lol
But by far the best part of my short stay in town was seeing some Glaswegian police officers comically standing right next to a bright blue police box. My excitement over this is best conveyed in the voice memo I recorded as soon as I saw this:
Where did they come from? Where are they going!
After that little adventure, I got some food for the road, bought some more contact lens solution, and was off to the train station. Highlands, here I come!
I’d also like to add that it was while wandering around Glasgow that I learned to whistle. Finally! I spent the entire month of April trying to figure it out, and for some reason it finally clicked in Scotland. Hooray!
Some more anthropological observations:
All the plastic water bottles in the UK have their plastic caps attached to the bottle itself. This way, you only have one thing to recycle, not two, leading to much less litter as a result. I have no idea why the US doesn't do that
Media appendix:
I think it cost something like 100£ in labor costs per removal
I also learned that the cone is also used for political activism, and different colored cones are put up for different events. For example, a blue-and-yellow cone was put up in early 2022 to show solidarity with Ukraine when Russia first invaded
Writing these blogs makes me realize that I do use “cool” a lot. Rachel, you were right!
Only 3 footnotes! Look at you go.