A NATURAL instinct for comradeship and brightness has driven him from a squalid home into illuminated streets, and from these the weather drives him for shelter to the public-house. Tis his only refuge from discomfort and weariness, and if he goes home drunk, he never meant to, and you cannot blame him.”

So wrote Archibald Charteris in 1901 about the patrons of pubs in Glasgow, where magistrates clamped down on them providing seating therein to discourage customers from lingering and thus opening themselves up to further temptation. Some 125 years later the welcome is far kinder, although on a busy lunchtime somewhere to rest your weary bones can be just as hard to come by.

We spent three days in the city and, purely in the interests of research you understand, visited numerous pubs to soak up some local atmosphere.

Enjoy Glasgow’s striking architecture. Picture by Gary LawrenceTo my mind, pubs are the best places to get a sense of where you are and the people who inhabit it. There’s nothing more revealing about the people of a city than listening to the buzz of their conversation and watching their interactions and in Glasgow, where outside it was freezing, indoors there was only warmth.

We were staying amid the comfort of The Glasgow Grosvenor Hotel at the top of lively Byers Road, the main artery of the city’s West End, where students from the nearby university congregate in the many bars and restaurants dotted along it.

The 97-room hotel is part of a magnificent Venetian-style terrace, built in 1858, that looks out over Great Western Road towards the botanic gardens and is a short walk from the University of Glasgow and Kelvingrove Museum. Its bar, BeGIN, and steak restaurant, Bo’Vine, are lively meeting places and, together with the hotel’s five conference rooms looking out towards the terrace, make it a part of the community.

Room at The Glasgow Grosvenor Hotel

After enjoying the bar’s buzz, we ate at Bo’Vine on our first night and although it is billed as temple to meat consumption – complete with a trail of hoof prints to lead you there and a giant cow’s head sculpture on the wall – it hides its light under a bushel somewhat. The vegan moussaka my wife ordered was delicious, the perfect balance of spiciness and flavour.

Another bonus was our redoubtable waitress Karen, a Glasgow native who directed us for a post dinner drink to the nearby Òran Mór, an arts and entertainment centre in a former church with a magnificent carved main bar.

Getting around Glasgow is easy thanks to the efficient subway that circumvents the compact city via its outer (clockwise) and inner (anticlockwise) routes. Built in 1896, it is the world’s third-oldest underground metro system but it is so clean it looks as if it was completed yesterday.

Glasgow Gallery of Art. Picture by Gary Lawrence

It took us from nearby Hillhead to Buchanan Street at the heart of the city where we wandered the streets gazing up at imposing Victorian architecture that is so distinct it is named as the ‘Glasgow style’. The likes of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Alexander Thompson left their mark through extravagant art nouveau and Greek designs that reflected the confidence and wealth of a mid-19th century city known as the ‘second city of the empire’.

The bar at the Glasgow Grosvenor Hotel

One of Glasgow’s gems is its Gallery of Modern Art in Royal Exchange Square. The former slaver’s home, bank, exchange and library now houses collections of modern art but perhaps its most iconic attraction isn’t even part of those collections. Visitors are greeted by a statue of the Duke of Wellington on horseback whose head is invariably adorned with a traffic cone.

The city’s striking beauty extends to its pubs, for instance the sumptuous Horseshoe Bar built in 1870 and boasting the second-longest continuous bar in the UK. Legend has it that when Roy Rogers and his horse Trigger visited Glasgow in the 1950s they rode right around the bar.

Sloans, Glasgow

Even older is Sloans in the opulent Argyll Arcade. The former coffee house once hosted cockfighting in a courtyard now strewn with fairy lights. It has a beautiful main bar, a restaurant and a magnificent ballroom that hosts Friday night ceilidhs.

Courting couples, so the stories go, would choose an engagement ring from one of the jewellers in the arcade and then go into Sloans to toast their betrothal, returning months later to celebrate their nuptials beneath the stained glass of the ballroom.

Sloans, Glasgow

The truth is that, like London, there is an historic pub on almost every corner. As the puritanical Mr Charteris observed, they are a welcome respite from the harshness of the weather, but more than that, they are the beating heart of this gloriously effervescent city.

DETAILS:

  • For more information about The Glasgow Grosvenor Hotel visit www.gghotel.co.uk or call 0141 3398811.

  • EasyJet fly direct to Glasgow from East Midlands, Bristol and Heathrow from £35 each way