Saturday 14th May.

Away by about 11:00, heading out through Paisley, where there are beautiful well managed pastures grazing predominantly sheep. but with a lot of cropping.

Through to the east of Glasgow without entering the city proper, but the views from the motorway reinforcing the observations of the other day of improved prosperity with the number of new and revamped buildings, plus the demolition of abandoned properties.
The whole country, ie buildings and infrastructure, is looking smarter than it was a few years back.

Out through Lanark; grazing, cropping, and market gardens, This is really high fertility highly productive land; they must have a micro-climate that suits as well.

The Scots have some great names; we passed Tillietudlum Castle. (Pronounced Tilly to dill um.) There must be a story behind it, but Charlie says he doesn't know it.

Around this area we passed many abandoned glass house complexes, some encompassing several acres, all built on a slope, and all with a chimney at the bottom end.
I would guess that this was for frost protection; light a fire in the fireplace at the bottom, and the hot air would then rise up through the glasshouse to the top. From the look, style, and condition of these structures I'd make another guess and say they were built around 1940 for the war effort.

Arrived at our destination: New Lanark, a village built around a mill. The mill itself was built in the late 1700s and early 1800s by a Robert Owen, and was powered initially by an immense overshot water wheel that was an engineering feat in itself. A tunnel was driven through the granite to draw water from above the Dundaff Linn falls on the Clyde. the water then being flumed down to the wheel, which was about eighteen feet across.
In 1881 a steam engine was incorporated into the system to be used only at times of low flow in the river; as steam was much more expensive than the free water power.

Once the mill was operative he started building the village to house his workers.

As his business prospered and grew, so he developed the facilities in the village to the benefit of his staff; with a co-operative store, where prices were lower than in the town above, a resident village doctor, where for a payment of two shillings and sixpence per family they had unlimited access to medical treatment, a church, a building the housed 'The Institute for the Formation of Character', and a school, 'A Rational system of Education', well equipped and with spacious classrooms for the kids and any adults who chose to study at the night classes that were held.
All free.

As part of the tour we were put in ski-lift-type pods and taken on a mono-rail tour through the life of a young village girl.
She was born in 1810, left school to work in the mill at the age of 10, lived with her granny (who was too old to work so lived with and was cared by dad, and after many years of work in the mill was too deaf to hear much,) her mum and dad, her siblings, (including her sister and her man, plus their child,) a total of eleven people in two rooms.
She worked ten and a half hours a day, six days a week, and got two days holiday per year.

Why did our forebears get to hell out of the place I wonder!
NZ, Canada, Aust, USA...wherever...it must have appeared paradise!
And yet this Robert Owen was considered a philanthropist and a forward thinker of his time.

A bloody interesting tour.

Headed back to Ruh through Carluke, Helensworth, and Newhouse, once again highly productive fertile land; albeit with a very low pH. (That's potential Hydrogen...thought I'd better explain...)