West from Glasgow, the Clyde opens out to its attractive estuary. The west-flowing river takes a bend and opens southwards to the sea via a coast dotted with former resorts. You are still close to Glasgow at this bend, but the Highlands are within touching distance to the north and west, and sea lochs bite in from all sides. This is excellent sailing country, with peninsulas, islands, hills, beaches, and little coastal towns in abundance, all sheltered from the worst of the Atlantic weather by the protective arm of Kintyre. It is such good sailing country, in fact - with sheltered deep water, private roadless lochsides, yet still close to a large local labour pool - that the UK bases its nuclear submarine fleet on the Clyde at Gareloch. (As did the US Navy during the Cold War, in the next door Holy Loch.) It is a rare luxury in Britain to be able to live in a major connurbation (the area immediately around Glasgow has 2 million inhabitants) yet live next to such natural beauty, and in the days before cheap jet travel to the Meditterranean and Florida, these Clyde towns were holiday resorts for the people of Glasgow, arriving by train and paddle steamer - one of which, the Waverley, still plies her trade. Strangely today, despite proximity to Glasgow, this area has become a quiet, undiscovered backwater, with relatively few prospects for employment and few tourists. Times are quieter, and the towns wear the faded glamour of all Britain's Victorian seaside resorts. Yet it remains as attractive as ever for those who do seek it out, and the sea broadens to accomodate the islands of Bute, Cumbrae, and mountainous Arran.

Tourism was - and remains - the preserve of the coastal belt facing the Firth of Clyde. Much of the area - East Ayrshire and Inverclyde - were recently industrial: the population employed in factories, weaving, coal mines, and Glasgow's deep-water port. But, whilst Glasgow has had to reinvent itself as perhaps the world's first post-industrial city, these areas slumber, not yet having found something to replace their past glories.

Thus, the area to the southwest of Glasgow is now largely pastoral, and the further south one goes, the more one is reminded of the glens and coasts of nearby Northern Ireland. There is a relatively high number of fair people (the only Scottish supermodel, Kirsty Hume, came from Ayrshire), and it is a land of heroes - Robert the Bruce, William Wallace, Robert Burns and John Paul Jones, the American Navy's first admiral, all came from South-West Scotland. Carrick and Galloway are areas of small villages and pleasant, rather than spectacular, scenery, and Galloway is the sort of place one might want to live, rather than visit. As one nears Stranraer and the ferry terminal for Belfast, the coastal road becomes squeezed between the sea and enroaching hills. These surprisingly rugged Galloway hills are more reminiscent of Rannoch Moor in the Highlands than the smoother sheepwalks of the Border hills to the east. The Galloway hills seperate the southern coast from the rest of Scotland and this coast has always been a little bit apart, a little bit independent to the rest of the country. The very name 'Galloway' means land of the strangers, and in early Scottish history, Galloway was just that.

Along the coast, all the way to the border, are innumerable smugglers caves, occasional small offshore islands, and pretty little villages, and one easily imagines Enid Blyton's 'Famous Five' stories being set in this area rather than England's West Country. Indeed, at Balcary Point, it is alleged that one of the old smuggler's caves leads directly to the cellar of the local hotel! However, if it seems quiet now, and the coast of Ayrshire echoes to times we can understand - the days of holidaymakers escaping the 19thc grime of Glasgow - the coast of Galloway has an air of much earlier days, days of persecution and suspicion, of contraband, Convenanters, witch burnings, and guerilla warfare with England. Cult movie 'The Wicker Man' was filmed in Kirkcudbright, a fishing village popular with turn of the century artists, and somehow this seems appropriate, given Galloway's bloody history. Nearer the border, the shallow water and extensive tidal estuary of the Solway firth looks over to England's Lake District, and has some of the most extensive tidal areas in Britain. This was good defensive land, and a couple of castles used the tidal marshes to good effect. Caerlaverock is the most famous, today sitting in a moat on reclaimed land next to the main western route north from England. Not surprisingly, this castle saw a lot of action in medieaval times, as did Threave, accessible only by boat to this day. Now, only the occasional castle, or ruined abbey, remain from turbulent past times. Caerlaverock in its moat, Threave on its island. So peaceful now. Sweetheart, a beautiful ruined abbey. Inland, quiet country roads lead past fields full of Galloway cattle.