I might just as well have called this post “Public Whimsy,” because the bridges in question are nicknamed Squiggly and Squinty, and it’s the nicknames that have stuck. Gotta love Glaswegians . . .
Squiggly
Squinty
Photo Memory of the Week
Backyard Blog
2026 Jun 04: Here's the front/backyard this week:
- the magnolia in its last showing
- two lilacs having fun with some reflections, starting with serendipity and ending with staged
I grew up reading — among others — John Buchan’s stories about the Scottish highlands. For the highlands, Edinburgh was the fabled city, Glasgow a grubby shipyard town. So I have carried with me most of my life a feeling that Glasgow was a notch below — not sure of below what, but definitely below. I’m now told that I have done Glasgow a great injustice. And any city that can call its bridges Squiggly and Squinty deserves a second chance.
Jim T
Jim – Our 2012 trip left us impressed with Glasgow – its energy, architecture, and air of appropriate irreverence, among other things. That impression continued on this trip. Glasgow has about 3 times the population of Edinburgh, but seems to be much easier to get around, at least in the core. Edinburgh favours buses, trams/streetcars, and bicycles. I think they’d be happy if there were no cars downtown.
ACH. Mighty fine looking bridges!
Tom
Tom – They are, aren’t they?
Nice bridges and pics thereof. Nice to see bridges with artistic character
Jim: Yes, it’s nice to have some design flair, as long as it doesn’t drive costs up too much. Recently, Ottawa built two really neat bridges that bankrupted the contractors. The procurement system isn’t supposed to work like that!
Great photos! Excellent reflections! I hope to see these in a few weeks. Thanks for the idea.
Judith – Wonderful! Enjoy. These were all taken between 5 and 6 AM (just as the clubs were letting out their last patrons) and I got lucky with what they call a slack tide, I think.