We were going to visit Rome for a spring break, but I gave Jayne the choice of Rome or Scotland and she chose Scotland, and was very excited about it. There were two main reasons for this. The first is that we have been thinking about moving up there and it would give us a chance to look at some towns and villages to see where we might like to see out our days. The second reason is that I have been visiting Glasgow a bit over the last few years for work but never got a chance to see the city during the daytime when things are open.

The trip started badly when we took the cat off to a cattery on Saturday and made the mistake of putting him in a non-waterproof carrying case. During a fairly short journey he sprayed all over the place, which ran out and soaked my jeans with cat piss. He also took an almighty dump and stank the car out. But things got better after that.

We had decided to drive rather than fly, so that we would not have to mess around with rental cars, and left home at 0400 on Sunday so that we would get well North of London before the traffic built up. We made a few stops, including the Tebay services (to see what all the fuss is about) and a detour into Penrith to get petrol – at least 20p a litre cheaper than at the motorway services. We reached Glasgow at about 1pm I think.

The plan was to stay in Glasgow for a couple of days to see the city, and then relocate to Kilmarnock as a base for exploring Ayrshire. When I say Glasgow I actually mean in Braehead rather than having to drive into the city centre. I know Braehead fairly well from my work visits and so knew that there was a direct bus from there into the city.

We took the bus into Glasgow in the evening to look around and get something to eat. We ended up in an African restaurant near the main station, completely unaware that there was a huge fire there. We only found out when we got back to the hotel, though it did go some way to explaining why our bus was delayed and absolutely full, compared to all the other times I have taken the number 77.

On Monday we went into the city again for some proper sightseeing, going all the way to Buchanan Street. It was quite a novelty for me to be able to go round the city centre while the shops were all open.

Obviously there were quite a few roads that were closed because of the fire at Glasgow Central station, and the firefighting was still going strong. Almost 24 hours after the fire started they were still hosing it down. Apart from the roads in the immediate vicinity being closed, Hope Street and Oswald Street were closed so they could run a massive hose down it to suck up water from the Clyde, half a kilometre away.

I am so glad we had not taken the train up, because the station was still closed at the end of the week when we were going home. Fortunately, Oswald Street was still open for pedestrians, so I was able to go into Missing Records to see what it is like, since it will be one of the few local record shops when we move. I didn’t buy anything, but was pleased to see that it is huge. As you go in there is a long room full of CDs and then at the end a doorway takes you to an enormous room crammed with vinyl.

Having satisfied myself that I will have a place to indulge my record buying, we made our way back up to catch a bus across to Kelvingrove. We did not go in though. I will save that for when I am on my won because Jayne doesn’t really do art. Instead, we walked down to the Riverside Museum.

That is an amazing place. I had thought it was mostly a maritime museum because of its shape and because of the tall ship moored outside, but it is really a museum of mostly transport-related stuff and Glasgow history stuff. There is a re-creation of an old street with shops, a wall full of cars, another wall full of motorbikes, big steam locomotives, buses, trams, and lots of models of ships, many of which would have been built in the Clyde shipyards. There was even a four-seater bicycle – going one better than the Goodies! Even Jayne liked this place.

Instead of going back up to Argyll Street to catch the 77 back we went across my favourite bridge to Govan to get bit of late lunch and then caught a different bus back to the hotel.

Originally we had planned to spend a couple of days visiting Glasgow, but Jayne is not a big fan of cities and so I suggested that we go up to the countryside instead. We headed North to Loch Lomond after breakfast. When we reached the Loch it was still quite foggy but nevertheless it was an impressive view from Firkin Point.

We carried on up the West side of the loch then followed the A82 round the top, stopping off at the Falls of Falloch. It was still a bit dreich, as the Scots would say, but at least it had stopped raining and it turned out to be a good time to visit. The car park is not that big and I imagine it gets quite busy in the spring and summer, but it was fairly quiet for us and well worth the journey.

Instead of returning the way we came, we continued on towards Sterling, because I had spotted a place on that road that promised highland cows you could feed. We found the place OK, but unfortunately the coos were away on holiday. Who even know that was a thing? We had a look through the shop and had a pleasant coffee and cake and the lady in the cafe told us of a place where we should be able to see some coos. We did find that place, and there were indeed highland cattle there. They were quite distant, but at least Jayne got to see them – she has become quite obsessed with them.

As we were going that way anyway, we stopped off in Sterling, which seems like a pleasant little city. As a bonus, I found a record shop there and had a little browse, before buying a few LPs and, after another coffee, I persuaded Jayne to take a small detour to see the Kelpies, since we were so close. Jayne didn’t know about this place but was pretty impressed by it.

Much to Jayne’s dismay, the route back took us right through the centre of Glasgow, but we were now heading out to Kilmarnock to a different Premier Inn, well away from the city.

Over the next couple of days we visited all sorts of towns and villages. First of all we went to Cumnock because there was a house we wanted to see but we had been unable to get through to the estate agent by phone and so rocked up at his shop first thing. We were able to arrange a viewing that afternoon. Cumnock is a decent little town, where Keir Hardie moved to set up the mining union. He is still a big deal there.

We carried on down to Patna to view another house, which was OK but a long way to travel into Govan to work. The sort of distance I would only tolerate if I absolutely loved the house. I didn’t love the house. It was OK, but it didn’t justify the distance. After going through Ayr to kill some time we looked the other house and that was much more to our liking, as well as being 30 minutes closed to work.

The next day we looked up around Kilwinning, Saltcoats, Stevenston, and Irvine but didn’t really like them too much. I’m sure we didn’t see them at their best, but we preferred the Cumnock/New Cumnock area more. After doing some sums we decided to put in an offer for the house we looked at near Cumnock.

We did return to Saltcoats later the next day anyway. It was a bit less rainy and so a little more lively. Jayne went for a coffee while I visited the record shop there – the only one in Ayrshire as far as I can make out. I made a friend and bought a few records.

The whole property-buying process in Scotland is a bit different to England. The place we put in an offer for had a closing date of noon on Friday, when we were going to be travelling back home. We were halfway back and well into England when we got an email from our solicitor to tell us that our offer had been accepted! Friday 13th was certainly lucky for us.

Having gone up to get an idea of towns we might like to look for houses in we instead actually ended up coming home committed to buying a house a bit earlier than expected. Given the unfamiliar legal system we had anticipated a lot more trouble and were quite surprised to get a place at the first attempt.

The thing is that I can spend ages making choices about small things but then get quite impulsive with bigger things. I can spend hours deciding on which book or record to buy, and spent weeks comparing technical specs when I bought my first DVD player and my first mp3 player, but have made snap decisions on buying cars, motorbikes and houses in the past.

Anyway, it looks like it will only take 4 to 6 weeks to go through, and then we will be property owners in Scotland. We might not actually move this year though. I think we will take some time to make a few changes and do decorating while the house is empty, and take some time to get rid of stuff we probably should have got rid of ages ago. Or maybe we will move sooner. We are lucky to have the option to wait if we want to.

Basically, this has been the most expensive holiday I have ever taken. Maybe we should have gone to Rome after all.