Chatelherault

As with Balloch, it's stretching it to call Hamilton's Chatelherault Country Park part of Glasgow, but it is an almost uniquely beautiful  part of Glasgow's  outer badlands ring and two trains go out every hour - you can get there for lunch and come back for tea - so let's claim it. Good wiki entry -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatelherault_Country_Park

It;s a popular place for festivals (see also Assorted festivals and fetes)

The beuatiful hunting lodge was bult for the Duke of Hamilton by William Adam  in 1734; Adam jokingy described it as a 'dog kennel'.

Gardens are lovely

Popular wee owl

These are the Red Hot Chili Pipers, who do lots of cheery stuff before closing with the inevitable 'Flower of Scotland' dirge to remind everyone they are real Scots. Like the Tartan Army, the Pipers are a self-conscious attempt to create a new Scottish stereotype, that of noisy, happy, determinedly heterosexual and not absolutely necessarily pissed drunks who love everybody  - except of course the English

Cops on bikes (obviously)

How Arbroath Smokies are done. . .

. . . as Sir Walter Scott once observed to James Hogg, 'Every herring should hang by its ain heid'

Note their website: good on the history of smokies

Dog overcome