Rumble Gull

Ok, so it's a motorbike.... 

but the final shot of Francis Ford Coppola's Rumble Fish (with Matt Dillon in front of the Pacific Ocean) is exquisite for the gull metaphor - the freedom, the freewheeling, the wind in the hair....

It's a film which (to quote from Pablo Neruda) sees Dillon (as well as his brother Rourke and his mates) as 'corpses in the city', only becoming free and alive when they escape it, following the river to its source, and reach the ocean's edge.

It recalls a passage in Nan Shepherd's wonderful The Living Mountain where she writes:

One cannot know the rivers until one has seen them at their sources; but this journey to the sources is not be undertaken lightly. One walks among elementals and elementals are not governable. There are awakened also in oneself by the contact, elementals that are as unpredicatble as wind or snow.

Whether the source of the river is a mountain spring or the ocean itself is really neither here nor there. One might argue that the river's source is everywhere and nowhere. But the point is, confronted by the vastness of aliveness (the elementality) that oceans and mountains present, and freed from the often diminished context of an all-too-human society, one is rendered correspondingly alive.

Mentality becomes elementality....

The ego becomes the geo...

Wheels become wings....

As for the great Pacific.... well, the ocean, as well as its name, speaks for itself.....

(Centi) Pedal Power

The other day whilst walking along Finnieston Road I saw this happy lot riding on what can only be called a rather convoluted, yet not entirely inelegant, cycling contraption. In spite of the almost centipedal pedal-power (deci-pedal would be more accurate), they weren't going that fast. But they did seem to be having fun, whilst expending a little active energy....

Not sure, though, if I'd like to be the one with my back to the flow of traffic.....

Kilbirnie to Fairlie via West Kilbride & Portencross

From Kilbirnie train station head through the town and down the back-road to Dalry entering Dalry from the north, and then taking the bottom orange route westwards towards West Kilbride.

The route to West Kilbride is quiet and good with some real country freshness along the way, and plenty of spots to stop and open that flask of coffee! From WK it's straightforward enough to follow the coastal path around to Portencross and beyond.

A quiet Kilbirnie main street, this late summer Sunday morning, with some old world flavour.

The view across Munnoch Reservoir to Knockewart Hill.

The serene back-road to West Kilbride.

West Kilbride, another quaint little town with some fascinating architecture, old and new.

 

 The coastal path towards Portencross. 

The wonderfully restored Portencross Castle, dating originally from the mid 1300s.

Fishermen on the pier.

And the view across the firth to Arran et al.

From Portencross, the path follows the coastline around to Hunterston Power Station, and then onwards to Fairlie. You can, if you have time, check out Hunterston House and Castle just off the beaten path. But maybe we have taken in too much already today. All that sea air is going to the brain, and I'm dying for a seat on that train back to Glasgow ;)

Route distance: a little less than 20 miles

Time taken: about 4 hours with 3 or 4 stops

The West Coast Route: Irvine to Maybole via Ayr, Dunure Castle, & Electric Brae

The west coast route from Irvine to Ayr and beyond is sublime. So sublime that you may think yourself travelling some French riviera! It's a fairly taxing route with a fair few hills from Ayr to Maybole, though this elevation does afford us some spectacular views across the Firth to the pyramidal silhouette of Ailsa Craig. The good news is that most of this route is part of the sustrans cycle route and so is marked along the way. I've just highlighted the dotted green line on the maps in purple. Historically, Irvine, Troon, Prestwick & Ayr have all something to offer the visitor, and really you could spend a whole day working this route if you make stops along the way. Even without stops however it's a good afternoon's cycle, with the train station at Maybole a welcoming sight to boomerang us back to Glasgow :)

The Troon to Ayr section is well-marked and straightforward with some nice seafront cycling.

From Ayr to Maybole the marked sustrans route skips over the hills but we are going to cling to the coast. A couple of kilometers on from Ayr there is a small detour into Dunure, an ideal place to have a rest and soak up the views. There is a castle here and a lovely harbour and of course wide-sweeping views across the sea.

Just around the corner from Dunure is one of Scotland's most bizarre phenomena - Electric Brae - which is always worth a stop just to test it out. Being on a bicycle as opposed to a car means that we can really put it to the test. Just watch out for the passing tour buses!

Entering Ayr by bicycle - a real eye-opening experience! (Personally, I don't think you've seen a town until you have entered it on foot, by bicycle, or on horseback).

From Ayr's promenade this crumbling castle (Greenan Castle) can be seen clinging to the edge of the fairly steep cliffs called the Heads of Ayr. I took the short path across the field and went in, but be careful if you do, there are some dangerous drops to be had! Moreover, this whole edge is subject to landslip and it'll be interesting to see if the castle is still there in a decade's time.

The idyllic Dunure harbour. The castle is just to the right, out of picture. A beautiful little place 
that I never knew about until my father mentioned it. So, I went there to find out for myself...

Spectacular colours this overcast September day in 2012, with the lofty adumbration of Ailsa Craig hugging the horizon. Epic!

Downhill you say? Try again ;) [The magical and somewhat bizarre Electric Brae, which, if the truth be told, has more to do with the way that hedgerow has been cut than any electrical phenomena].

An explanation of the magic, but sometimes it's better not to know why.... ;)

From Electric Brae, it's not far to Maybole train station, maybe 5kms or so, and most of it is downhill, especially the last part which is very steep and rushes into Maybole's town centre. All told, it's about 27 miles distance, which took me, as slow as I am, about 4-5 hours, with several stops along the way. From Maybole, the train will take you straight back to Glasgow in an hour or so.

Knowing All About It

Wisdom consists in perceiving that opposites, far from being sequestered in their exclusive individuality, ceaselessly modify and communicate with each other. The one never transpires but in response to the other, and all reality is nothing more than this process of reciprocal engendering.

Francois Julien, In Praise of Blandness

Up only exists because of down, not in spite of it. 

On a bicycle, or on foot, this process of reciprocal engendering is something that etches itself into the bones, brain and blood. You breathe those ups, you breathe those downs, because it is you, your blood and your bones, that works them, not sitting passively by, sealed behind screen and speed, as you let some machine do it for you. Moving under your own steam, the shape of the bodymind is thus governed by the shape of the land.

Because of these live-contoured-encounters, and this dynamic inter-influencing of bodymind and world, you soon understand that unity (or, com-unities), and not duality, governs the universe. Organism and environment, together, constitute a single evolutionary process.

A unity of opposites naturally emerges.

'Knowing All About It on the Loch Humphrey Path'     July 2013

Jolomo's Bicycle

The other day whilst coming down from the Kilpatrick hills, I passed through Clydebank and saw that there was an exhibition of the Scottish artist John Lowrie Morrison in the museum. I popped in to have a shuftie, and came across this early one (dated 1975), apparently done on the hoof, of Old MacQueen of Castleton. Granted it's not what you would typically associate with the colour-saturated tableaux of his later croft and seascapes, but this, for me, is one of his finest.

 

Old MacQueen of Castleton - John Lowrie Morrison, 1975

Sacred Cycles

There is something mystical about the bicycle, something mysterious about the way it conjoins with the body to move one forward through the creation of circles and spirals. I often wonder if the bicycle is the secret of the universe, hidden in plain sight, that few have yet noticed, for its capacity to energize, inspire and enopen.

Personally, I am convinced that it is.

'The path that can lead to liberation should be seen less a straight line, pointing forwards or upwards, but more as a spiral pattern of winding and intersecting loops, a string that unravels constantly through space, time and consciousness.'

Aidan Rankin, The Jain Path

Road Closed?

 'Crow Road - Closed?  Aye, right!'

A big red ‘Road Closed’ sign impedes the way. Apparently there’s been a landslide. From time to time, even the land moves at a pace we can recognise. I carry on up the road not so much ignoring the sign as amusing at it. When you walk with your own two feet or use a bicycle, (when you traverse this earth under your own steam and not outsource it to some lugubrious, over-sized machine), you quickly realise there is no such thing as a ‘road closed’ - indeed the concept of closed roads and closed-ness quickly becomes absurd. You find that you are open to everything, that nothing is ‘closed’, not the roads, not the hills, not the skies or the coast, nor the myriad forms that inhabit it all. Everything is emphatically open, and connected.

In this way, cycling is as much metaphorical and metaphysical as it is literal. One creates one's own path without being dictated to by rigid legislations. Car drivers, on the other hand, are so hooked in to the system of outsourcing that they have no idea whether they're coming or going. My father once told me (possibly the only words of wisdom that ever exited his mouth) that buying a car means connecting yourself to a system that constantly bleeds you dry (he was talking financially, via insurance, road tax, MOT, parking, fuel...) but he might as well have been talking psycho-physically. Following my own stints of working in countries like Libya, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia (countries not generally recognized for their road-safety records or bicycles) I understood not just the financial dangers of owning a car but the very real (meta-) physical ones too.

There are no 'dead ends' on a bicycle, no bottoms-of-bags (culs-de-sac) that you find yourself in, that dictate to you where you can and cannot go. There is a freedom to cycling that you could never ever get from a car, not in a million years. In all my years of cycling, (yes, I may have had to throw the bike on my back for crossing a stream or hiking over a hill), I've never had to stop and turn around because of a way that is closed. When you follow the way of the cycle, the cyclical way of bodying forth under your own steam, the word 'closed' never enters the equation. As the old Zen saying goes: the obstacle is the path. There is always a way forward.... (on a bicycle)...

Signature of a Flow-State

The Greatest Show on Earth

On this the first day of the 100th Tour de France, and having just watched the wonderful documentary The Greatest Show on Earth, charting the 1974 Giro d'Italia (and ultimately Eddy Merckx's victory), I got to wondering how Merckx, often lauded as the greatest cyclist ever, would regard the practice of slow cycling, and the idea of a 'non-race', and of cycling not as a means to an end but as an end in itself.

I suppose I am wondering if Monsieur Merckx, now 68, ever goes out for a slow cycle in the Belgian countryside, his head swaying from side to side as he takes in the passing pastoral landscapes... a 30km cycle taking a whole afternoon...

Surely, the greatest show on earth cannot be appreciated at 80kph and with your head down....?

'Eddy Merckx, Half Man Half Bike'

The Saintliness of Cycling

The inspiration for this little number was the idea that in using your own steam to travel and to think for yourself one became closer to 'sainthood', sainthood not just as a cleansing of the impurities that have hitherto encumbered selfhood, but also, in the spirit of the boddhisattva, of trying to show others the way. Here, I was taken by a photograph of Eddy Merckx and his colleagues sitting on the grass with an upturned bike behind them. The composition transformed the upturned wheels into halos, and the seated riders into saints. They were, after all, in the 'Zone', traversing the 'Pure Land'... in union with the white-gathered element...using their own steam to travel and travail, and find their way...

He whose reflective pure spirit sinks into Atman knows bliss inexpressible through words.  

The Upanishads

Dalmuir Loop (via The Slacks)

This is a great little circular, utilising (again) the wonderful Loch Humphrey path from Old Kilpatrick. Accordingly, you could start from Kilpatrick train station and not Dalmuir, but I prefer the couple of quiet kilometres along the canal towpath from Dalmuir to warm the body up before tackling that high road up into the Kilpatrick Hills. 

So, from Dalmuir train station, join the canal until just before the Erskine Bridge, and then turn right crossing the main road, and left for a 30 yards or so until the path that leads up the little glen to Kilpatrick train station. Cut around the bowling green, over the little bridge, down the hill, left under the carraigeway and the Loch Humphrey path is right in front of you. Just follow it all the way up until it begins to descend towards Loch Humphrey. Here, keep your eyes peeled for an unmarked footpath to the right. Take this, up and along the ridge (Boglairoch) - you will see in the far distance (about 2km away) the trig point for The Slacks. Just head towards it. The path is good enough to cycle too, but usually I walk with the bike in tow, allowing me a chance to inhale some of these cracking views.

 Epic-ness awaits on the Loch Humphrey path...

Loch Humphrey and, in the distance, the silhouette outlines of The Cobbler (on the left) to Ben Lomond (on the right).

From The Slacks looking eastwards to Greenside Reservoir, The Birny Hills (covered in sitka spruce), and the Campsie Fells beyond.

Looking south-east over the city to the volcanic shadow of Tinto Hill from The Slacks (from the Gaelic 'sloc' meaning ridge or saddle) -

The Greenside path (down to Cochno Road) with the Loch Humphrey burn aside it.

From The Slacks, continue along the footpath, down to Greenside Reservoir, and then the path down to Cochno Road (there is now a bypass in place further down which you can take). Here, you can either elect to turn right and continue down to Hardgate and back to Dalmuir train station via the A810 and Parkhall/Dalmuir Golf Course trail, or equally, take a left and head round to the Duntocher Road and Peel Glen Road which will take you eventually onto the canal once again where you can follow it eastwards to the west end and the city. The last route is, admittedly a little longer, but no less serene. (At the end of Peel Glen Road, turn left onto Kinfauns Road and then at the traffic lights head right opposite onto the little park path towards Westerton and the canal, or train).

The Awakening of Mr. Hoopdriver

The title here comes from a chapter heading in Herbert Georges Wells comic novel The Wheels of Chance, first published in 1896 at the height of a cycling craze in Britain and America, when practical, comfortable bicycles first became widely and cheaply available. Dissapointingly, the 'awakening' in question does not refer to the main protagonist's enlightenment aided and abetted by the riding of his bicycle but simply to his getting out of bed.

At any rate, whilst browsing the shelves for Wells' book I came across another (oh the joys of browsing!) - The Utopian Vision of H.G. Wells by Justin E. A. Busch. In it, I came across this:

If we are to avoid desuetude or extinction, we had better do the work ourselves... there is little to believe that the workings of nature have been suspended for the benefit of humanity [...] the Modern Utopia must not be static but kinetic, must shape not as a permanent state but as a hopeful stage leading to a long ascent of stages. In a teleological utopia, someone comes along ans sets it up for the inhabitants; in a evolutionary utopia each inhabitant is responsible for her or his own place or involvement.

So there we have it. The beauty of bicycling: doing the work ourselves, enactive involvement; involving ourselves responsibly and naturally, towards an evolutionary utopia... towards an awakening of a mister or a miss hoopdriver...

 

Mr. Hoopdriver and his hoops.

Linlithgow to Caldercruix via California!

The route is in red with a couple of either/or options.

There are many strange and beautiful place names in any given country. A few years ago I discovered Moscow (Moss Haugh) on the Volga Burn not too far from Fenwick just south-west of Glasgow on the way to Kilmarnock. This week, I finally visited California, high up on the back roads behind Falkirk.

The route here follows part of the canal towpath before branching off onto quiet country lanes and back roads. There's not too much traffic to deal with along the whole route. Indeed, at certain points on the road, such is the quietness of it all that you almost get the feeling that you are the last man on earth (especially on California Road leading up to California, the Greyrigg Road outside California, and the Telegraph Road outside Longriggend!). There are, also, a couple of either/or options before and after Slammanan that you can choose to take, all on equally tranquil roads.

From the canal at Linlithgow looking towards the unmistakeable St. Andrew's steeple of St. Michael's church.

From the California Road looking towards Grangemouth, the largest petrochemical works in UK.

 Going to California....

A beautiful day in Californ-i-a...

The slightly creepy Greyrigg Inn on the Greyrigg Road south of California.


The whole area here is gently undulating and beautifully curvaceous, whether roads or land. It is, coupled with the quietness of the roads, a joy to cycle through.

The aptly named Telegraph Road out of Longriggend.

From Longriggend to Caldercruix is only a few kilometres. The latter town has a train station now, so we can ride it back to Glasgow and give our poor feet a rest. Trains are once an hour, so check times, just in case you arrive two minutes too late (there's not a great deal to see and do in Caldercruix!).

Around Great Cumbrae

 'Miami Vice' - Nardini's Ice Cream Parlour in Largs.

What a wonderful little island Great Cumbrae is! And it's perfect, thanks to its cycle-friendly roads and lack of cars, for any cyclist no matter their age or expertise. It's surprisingly easy to get to from Glasgow with the train from Glasgow Central to Largs taking about an hour, and the ferry (every 30 mins. from Largs) taking 10-15 minutes. The variety of transport too: train, ferry, bicycle, foot, is also something that imparts a certains sense of accomplishment within one's bones. The route around is simple as there really are only two roads in Great Cumbrae: the ring road around the island and the interior road up to its highest point, The Glaid Stone, and back down. Its main town, Millport, is a quiet marvel of Victorian villa architetcure, and simplicity. Its promenade, harbour and beach, inevitably incline one to want to live here, if only for a few weeks. It has that sort of spell. I think it may be something in that invigorating sea air!

There is plenty to see and do with odd geological formations, the wonderful flora and fauna, the daintiest cathedral in all Europe, and the spectacular views from all around. It's an ideal location for a day-trip from Glasgow...

The quiet road around Great Cumbrae, looking westwards to the lumpy southern half of Bute, and beyond
to the craggy Isle of Arran.

On the beach at Millport.

 From Ninian Brae looking west.