Cessnock

Cessnock is a pleasant stop with lots of arty metalwork and some classic Glasgow architecture. If you've started at St Enoch on the Outer Circle, it is usually about now that various members of your party will start complaining of hunger, or AIMS (Alcohol-Induced 'Munchie' Syndrome). Best to wait a while yet.

As you come out of the bowels of the underground, take the right hand exit into Paisley Road West, (yes, the same street as Kinning Park) ducking under the Macintosh-esque metalwork (pictured right), the only surviving example of this style of Underground entrance. Keep right along the main road past a row of shops (chip shop is the first one on the corner) until the Kensington Bar looms in front of you, through some trees, slightly to the right. You can also go along the road behind the shops - it's all one really.

The Kensington offers a choice of two drinking areas. The main bar is a solid Glasgow affair with lots of wood and glass, there is not a lot of seating and you will most likely have to stand if it is a Sub-Saturday. The lounge bar boasts some precarious seating, a notoriously unreliable juke box (like the one in The Laurieston, this too used to offer Lloyd Cole's "Lost Weekend"; however it normally cost you about £15 worth of 50p pieces to hear the song, even if they bothered to switch the machine on, which wasn't often) and a small corner bar (actually just a trap door into the bar of the main bar serving area.). Beer is decent enough, though. Strangely, the pub's footballing allegiances (if any) appear to lie with Clydebank FC, as they have a "Bankies" football shirt above the main bar signed by none other than pop stars "Wet Wet Wet" (or as we call them, "Dream Dream Dream"). This is all the stranger when you consider that said football club ceased to exist in 2002. That's it really - the Kensington does not have that much of note to offer.
	Kensington Bar (408 Paisley Road West, G51 1BE. Tel. 0141 427 3328)
*Other Pubs:* Those in search of a bit of variety might be a bit stuck at this stop, as the former next nearest pub, the Clachan Bar, has apparently now closed.

Those who can wait no longer for food might want to try out the nearby chippy, and in particular the "single fish" as (according to one of our readers) you get two whole fish for your money (this makes perfect sense if you're a Glaswegian, by the way).

Architecture lesson: As you trundle back to the subway station take a look around (if you can still focus) at the buildings on either side of the road. What you have here are classic Glasgow sandstone tenements, the yellow sandstone marks them as being the early (mid-19th Century) phase of building. The red sandstone tenements belong to the later (late 19th and/or early 20th Century) building phase. Glasgow revolutionised social housing in Britain when the city fathers cleared away the old housing stock and built the tenements in their place; of course later on most of the tenement areas fell into decline, but at the time of building they were the dez-res. There is a plaque on the tenement closest to the subway entrance about the famous architect Alexander 'Greek' Thompson, who is responsible for the planning of the area.

Continue on your journey . . .