Lochwinnoch to Port Glasgow via Mars

It never ceases to amaze me how easily I can reach the country from where I live in Cessnock. Five minutes over the motorway to Dumbreck and another ten minutes on the train to Paisley Canal. From there, the two minute cycle downhill to Paisley Gilmour Street for the train to Lochwinnoch is the most architecturally fascinating inter-station kilometre alongside the Glasgow Central - Glasgow Queen Street one. Fifteen minutes on the train and I am at the loch of birds (loch eanach) and at the foot of the Inverclyde hills.

The map route for this cycle can be found in another post here:

 http://cyclingmeditations.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/lochwinnoch-to-port-glasgow-via-duchal.html

In spite of the constant smir of rain - there's nothing quite like cycling in drizzle! - the temperature for this 4th February was unseasonably warm reaching perhaps 9 degrees above zero. The single track road up to the Muirshiel Country Park Visitor Centre was people-empty save for the mad little postie and his little red van.

This uprooted tree is a fitting symbol for modern man: still alive but not doing great (in his removal from the land). This whole area, if not the whole country, used to be covered with trees: oak, hazel, birch, pine... But now all we have are ornaments and monuments: a few trees together here and there. Admittedly, the Muirshiel Park is trying to re-establish the natural tree cover that this land used to have. We're not talking plantations here but real woodland, as unmanaged and left to its own devices as possible. But the history of Scotland is, like many other nations, the history of destruction and forced extinction; of trees, birds, land, loch and sea. We are only beginning to realize the devastation our forefathers let loose on this fragile land.

This is a remnant of the old narrow guage track that used to convey those ignoramuses who sought enjoyment out of killing defenceless birds like grouse and treating the land as some kind of sport. They couldn't even be bothered walking these moors, so they had a railway built for them, and of course, in line with their ignorance, left it to rot when their fun ended. The hill in the right distance is Laird's Seat.

Here's to the moors and bogs, remoteness and solitude, the tranquility of the mist, all the features that can redeem the spirit. (Oh, and thermos flasks too!)

Some of these pools are deep enough to swallow you whole. I cycled through most of them getting my feet wet along the way but there were a couple which were too deep even from my lofty 29 inch wheels.

The utter desolation of the moors renders a magical quality unto your living. It is an enchanting place that enopens you, and where, given the length and breadth of space and of remoteness (and all the qualities that arise from those), one can understand the Self, not the small manufactured and ornamented self but the indefinite immense and large-eyed Self. It is only by losing yourself that you shall find your self, and here atop these high land moors and bogs, imbued by a wealth of elements and space, one comes closer to the ultimate realization that all this is 'You' -

Exiting the moors via Hardridge Farm, the mist and the smirr coats everything in a gentle blanket of cosiness. There really is nothing quite like cycling in a light rain!

Cairncurran Hill in the misty distance from the Chapel path.