WELCOME TO GLASGOW, LET US SHOW YOU AROUND
Our Story
Glasgow is a city unlike any other. Sure, you can read Glasgow’s history as a list of events that took place on a list of dates, but it won’t paint a picture of this city. You can know every King and Queen Scotland has ever seen and still be no closer to knowing the essence of its largest city. Glasgow is something else, separate to the rest of Scotland and unabashedly proud of itself.
The story of Glasgow isn’t just “founded in 550 by St Mungo”. The story of Glasgow isn’t one about Lords and Dukes fighting in a parliament, it isn’t big battles or castles being seized. The story of Glasgow is the women who hung up their washing in Glasgow Green, the men who toiled day after day to build the ships that changed the world. Glasgow is defined by the kind of community spirit that can only exist within a tenement building, families living one on top of one another, their lives overlapping to create a vertical village where everyone looks after everyone.
Turadh Tours was founded to give something different, to celebrate the stories history books have tried to ignore and to embrace the true essence of what makes Glasgow special. Our tours have been written for and by Glaswegians. Our guides are that special kind of Glaswegian- brought up in one of those Glasgow tenaments by generations of tough women who were also born and grew up in Glasgow tenaments. We have armed ourselves with their stories, their jokes, their scrappy tenacity and their pride in their home and is now sharing that with you. As a young adult, she moved around, learning how to guide whilst living in London. She won Tour Guide of the Year there and vowed that she would take this skill and use it to tell her own story.
The Glaswegian sense of humour is famed the world over. The harsh, sharp kind of humour that only grows from extreme deprivation. From civil unrest and political ignorance. Believe us, you need a good sense of humour to live in this weather. Our tours will make you laugh, help you learn, make you think and hopefully, show you Glasgow in a whole new light.
We know our history is checkered and spotty, we’ve been through difficult times and we’ve struggled, but the essence of Glasgow is our fight. Even the worst of times make good material for laughing in the pub with your pals.
We’re a wee city with an incredible heart. We are the black sheep. The underdog. And we love it.