Heading for home

A routine hospital visit took us to The Other Side this afternoon; Inverclyde Royal is stuck on the top of a very steep hill and we've never tried going without the car, so we went shopping to maximise the benefit of the ferry ticket and came home at teatime. This is the view from the McInroy's Point terminal, with the Cal Mac Argyll Flyer (a misnomer: she's never allowed to fly) and a smallish cargo ship heading upriver under tumultuous clouds.

As we drove towards the ferry, I was thinking yet again of the contrast with the west side of the Firth of even a line of small towns like Port Glasgow or Greenock. It felt so urban, especially the rather odd hinterland between the hospital and the M8. The hospital building itself was looking pretty shabby: a letter had fallen off the name across the front of the building, in a Tory Party Conference fashion, and the female toilet on the ground floor had a cubicle out of order notice that was there when I  used the loo three or four weeks ago. In fact, it looked rather like a hospital in the Soviet Union - utilitarian, busy, down-at-heel. Some great medicine, though ...