First off, let me state I have not been on the Glasgow bus tour, despite being born in the city and living here for all of my 25 years, so this was a brand new experience for me. This idea came about as a discussion of the quickest way to hatch eggs and hit as many Pokestops as possible.

We met up and started at the only stop that we knew the bus would definitely be there, George Square. The tour costs £14 for a day ticket which allows you to hop on and off at as many of the 21 stops as you like, there is also a student discount available. We did not check out the website beforehand as it was a spontaneous decision to do the tour, however they do offer discounts if booking through it. The website also offers further information we did not know of and were not made aware of by the guide such as discount on food at the Willow Tea Rooms, an option to get subway travel with the ticket and also a 2 day ticket which would be useful if looking to get off at many of the stops and explore the other sights of Glasgow.

The stops the tour allows you to get off at include The West Brewery, offering very good food and drink. Furthermore West Brewery is in Glasgow Green which is usually a nest, on our trip it was Goldeen unfortunately but they were spawning at a rapid rate. Further stops of note are the SECC/Hydro, Transport Museum, Kelvingrove Art Gallery, Glasgow University and the Tennents Brewery. The Museum and Art Gallery are both free entry and are definitely worth getting off for a wander in.

As for the benefits of playing Pokemon Go during this tour, we stayed on the bus the whole time and did two full loops which took about 3 hours total. We listened to the Tour guide on the first loop round and there are some great insights into different parts of the city and the history of the buildings, however the guide is a recording and is often out of sync with where the bus is on the route. The guide is offered in multiple languages so visitors will also learn of the history of the city, there is also a “Ghoulish Glasgow” version which is mainly aimed at children, I listened to parts of it on the second loop and it gives some further insight into the haunted parts of the city. I should also mention here that the tour do provide headphones you can keep, however if wanting to use your own it is a standard headphone socket which you can plug into.

Anyway, the main question to answer is how good is this tour for playing Pokemon Go on?

During the tour I managed to get a total of about 10km onto my buddy, Charmeleon, which is equivalent to 3 candies gained on the long road to Charizard. This also helped me hatch my 10km egg which turned out to be a Chansey, giving me a new entry to my Pokedex and some strange looks as I screamed YASSSSS from up the back of the bus. As mentioned previously we were on for two full loops, if only doing one loop you will get 5-6km onto your distance, which is extremely beneficial if, like me you constantly only seem to get 5km eggs from Pokestops.

With regards to the Pokestops, the tour bus company estimates you will hit around 120 stops. It is possible to plan it further out and get an exact number if you use the excellent Pokemon map of Glasgow compiled by the Pokemon Glasgow subreddit. It is also worth mentioning you can contribute stops to the map if you notice they are missing and help the community further.

I begun the tour with the following inventory:

As you can see, dangerously low levels of ultra and great balls, if anything rare and with a high cp had appeared it is safe to say I’d have been screwed. Unfortunately for me, I am a repellant to anything really rare spawning in the wild (where you at Snorlax???).

By the end of the tour i had managed to get a much healthier inventory and also had to do a bag upgrade as I was acquiring too many items, I was also binning the more useless items such as revive, potion and razz berry as I was going round. I was also using up a decent amount of Pokeballs catching the usual lucky egg fodder of Pidgey, Weedle and Caterpie.

Furthermore, in the final image above a “glitch” occurred in the game where I levelled up just near the end of the tour and had a full bag so it ended up stating 732/700 items. Regarding levelling up, I estimate I got around 40k xp from being on the tour due to spinning Pokestops, catching Pokemon and occasionally managing to chuck something into gyms where there were empty spaces. It is definitely possible to get more xp than this if you have multiple eggs hatching, I only had the infinite incubator at the time and was using it for my 10km egg. Midway through the second loop I bought some more incubators and put the 5km eggs I had been stuck with for a while on and managed to get them all to around 3km.

In conclusion, the tour is definitely a good way to boost you inventory up whilst learning more about the city of Glasgow. It is a bit on the expensive side for just collecting items as you would probably be able to get similar amounts by spending the full day walking up and down Buchanan street. However, if you have never been on the tour before, it is a great way to see some sights and if you get off to check out some of the stops such as the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Transport Museum it will feel like better value for money as they are free entry venues. As mentioned previously it is definitely worth checking on their website and booking there first rather than turning up as it saves money and tells more about the various ticket types plus discounts to other venues they offer.

Further Information:

City tour website

http://www.citysightseeingglasgow.co.uk/the-glasgow-tour/

Map of Glasgow Pokestops

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1SHL3TP2ARSzR-jAH1coX0nxKgjQ