I got in a slightly heated discussion about this with someone on here not long ago. We were talking about what makes one uni better than another.
The thing that separates universities is not the outright difficulty of the material, but in the amount of content they're able to teach you over the time you're there. This is mostly about what professors they have available to teach in specialist topics, or about what funding they can get to employ these professors.
Basically, physics degrees (or any major subject) have to meet certain specifications to be granted the right to be called an official degree in that subject. So with physics, the core material is set out by the institute of physics - look at pages 8 and 9 of this PDF -
http://www.iop.org/education/higher_education/accreditation/file_64166.pdfOf those core topics listed, I'd covered all of them, and more, by the end of 2nd year (at Leeds uni), which has left room to learn more advanced and interesting 'extra stuff' in 3rd year, for example Lagrangian mechanics, fluid dynamics and advanced quantum mechanics, all of which are surplus to the core requirements set out by the Institute of Physics.
I've had a look at the UWS undergrad physics page. It looks like it only covers the core topics of physics, so basically it's 100% definitely a physics degree, but a 'bare minimum' one. I notice in 1st year your physics modules cover the 'SQA Advanced Higher syllabus'. I've just had a look at that syllabus and downloaded an example exam paper. It's definitely nowhere near as in-depth as the stuff I did in 1st year. You'll learn stuff in more detail later on though. The point is just that you aren't learning it as quickly as other unis, which doesn't leave much room to learn any wider or specialist material.
So a physics degree at UWS will cover all the necessary material, but it'll be at a slower rate. This is presumably because there aren't any specialist teachers who can teach any extra topics, so they just spread the course content out.
Bad news, however, is that in all honesty it might be hard transferring to Glasgow because of the 'weakness' of the material you cover in 1st year. I don't think it'll prepare you enough, at least going by the information on the UWS physics course page.
Do you have any lecture notes you could send me so I can compare? I've attached a random set of lecture slides from the electromagnetism stuff I did in 1st year. According to the UWS website, you don't do any of that until 3rd year?
What kind of maths stuff are you learning now? At this point in 1st year I'd done volume integrals in all major co-ordinate systems, and had a good start on Fourier analysis. Have you covered any of that yet? If not, it would probably the major stumbling block when requesting to change to a place like Glasgow.
And to answer your question about how challenging Strathclyde and Glasgow are - yes they're more challenging but only in the fact that the core course content will be covered more quickly, which opens up more time to do extra specialist topics in 2nd or 3rd year.
Hope that helps!
I actually changed unis after 1st year as well, but the one I left was roughly on par with Leeds uni so there was no issue with changing over.