Milngavie to Dumgoyne Circular (via the Campsie Dene Trail & the West Highland Way)

This is another Milngavie loop starting at the train station and heading up the steep Mugdock Road to Mugdock Village. Again, after breathing in the views from this little summit, we follow the Old Mugdock Road down (everything that goes up...) to Strathblane. Here, take the Glasgow Road (A81) about half a kilometre along to Blanefield, and on your right you should see a lane rising up into the foothills of the fells. This is the Campsie Dene Trail, the old waterworks route that still pipes fresh water down to Glasgow from Loch Katrine. There are some fine water stations along the way hidden amongst the foliage. The path is car-free, and offers some sublime views across Quinloch Muir and the Blane Valley up towards the Highland range.

At the field where a path leads up to Dumgoyne, you can shackle your bike to a fence and take the earthen staircase up the very steep Dumgoyne to its 427 metre summit. It's probably no more than an hour there and back, but it is like climbing a few hundred flights of stairs! Really opens the mind up, so by the time that the view hits you, you are so spaced out that you might as well be looking in a mirror! (but not the kinds of mirrors we're used to).

The map is not the territory, a Polish philosopher once said. Perhaps then, I am...!

Instead of going back the way we came, once descended from Dumgoyne, we can carry along the Campsie Dene path for a couple of hundred metres until we find a path leading downwards onto the A81. Take a left onto the main road and then at the distillery take a right into its warehouses. This will lead you to a farm gate and another hundred metres or so to the West Highland Way path. Here, take a left and head past the bosky plug of Dumgoyach, where if you look to the field on the left you might see a row of 5 standing stones thought to date from the Middle Bronze Age.

[On the other side of this field - it can be reached by a path before you go round Dumgoyach - is the wonderful Duntreath Castle, now a private residence].

Continue up the rocky WHW path, and out onto the B821 where we follow the road a few hundred metres to the left before rejoining the WHW past Craigallian Loch (look out for the campfire dedication to the wanderers of old) and back down to Milngavie via the glorious Mugdock Wood. All in all, it's an excellent and invigorating route (with or without the hike up Dumgoyne) that takes about 3 or 4 hours depending on whether you decide to go up Dumgoyne or not.

The Craigallian Campfire.

A West Island Way: Southern Bute

Bute is wonderful! And getting there from Glasgow is a skoosh! Jump the 0950h train from Glasgow Central arriving at Wemyss Bay at 1040h for the connecting ferry to Rothesay (35mins) at 1100h.

The wonderful Wemyss Bay train station and ferry terminal (a real architectural gem!).


All going well, this means that by 1135h you're cycling past the wonderful Rothesay Castle into Bute's idyllic back of beyond. Whether its golden beaches, it's archaeologic curiosities, or its topographic variations (the southern half of the island is very different from the northern half), there is plenty to see for the avid visitor to Bute.

Approaching Rothesay.

The cycle route laid out here takes in a fair portion of variety and involves a little walking/hiking with bike in tow. The route (laid out in blue on the map) is self-explanatory and the first part involves heading south to St. Blane's Chapel on the southern tip of the island. 

The chapel itself dates back to the the sixth century when a Celtic monastery is said to have been built on the site by Saint Catan, the uncle of St. Blane. Blane's name is commemorated not only here in Bute, in areas around Glasgow like Blanefield, Strathblane, and Dunblane where the medieval saint is thought to have kicked about.

St. Blane's Chapel

From Blane's chapel it is a short hike up and around the highest hill on Bute's southern half, Suidhe Chatain towards the village of Kilchattan and its beautiful bay. This overland route is way-marked as part of the new West Island Way and so should be not trouble for you to follow (with or without bike in tow). By the time you get down to Kilchattan and its shoreline your feet will be dying for a wee dip in that crystal clear water.

From the shoulder of Suidhe Chatain looking over to Great Cumbrae and the mainland beyond.

Kilchattan Bay

The road back to Rothesay cuts through the sumptuous grounds of Mount Stuart, one of the finest gothic houses in Scotland. The woods too are something to behold with their old oaks and great big redwoods. There is a visitors' centre, cafe and shop for those who want to explore a little more.

Mount Stuart

Arriving back at Rothesay via a fine coastal road that passes some even finer Victorian Hotels, there's a ferry at 1600h or 1645h connecting with the train back to Glasgow from Wemyss Bay, the former getting you back for 1735h, the latter for 1844h. Either way, it's a beautiful day out using all the various modes of transportation: bicycle, train, ferry, foot... brain...and seeing a fair bit of life along the way. It's a real city escape, affordable and well-served by public transport. Not to be missed on a nice sunny day.

The Arrival of Socialism by Bicycle

Socialism can only arrive by bicycle. 

Jose Antonio Viera Gallo

One of the fundamental problems of western society is its readiness to outsource its own energy to a machine and to be taken in by the seductive sell. Whether brain or body, this readiness to outsource for the sake of 'convenience', is verging on a pandemic. The result of this 'outsorcery' is a gradual loss of self, as naturalness gives way to artifice, and the individual becomes more 'convened' to a hyper-mechanized and hyper-technologized way of being-in-the-world. This gradual loss of self itself signifies one's estrangement not just from one's own inner core, but from that which surrounds us and breathes life into us, our environment.

Our innate capacities for navigation, orientation, calculation, and worlding, have all been compromised by this outsorcery and convenience. A convenience that seeks to make us 'better' people but which in the long run, and quite paradoxically, makes us all worse off.

Socialism can only arrive by bicycle....  (Capitalism arrives by juggernaut!)

In other words, living together peacefully can only come about when we question convenience, when we start standing up to those who try to hijack our own energy, and with it, any possibility of synergetic enterprise with our world. The energetic component of the individual is not only essential to our understanding of world but to our understanding of self. In-sourcing the bodymind's own power (and what better tool than the bicycle for this?) is vital to our ability to world (as a verb), and not simply see the world as a static noun which is an object separate from a subject. 'World' is a reciprocal process, and the bicycle the great educator on the path to liberation....

'Process not progress' will be the mantra of the new utopia, and cycle paths not motorways will form its arteries.

When our governments start cycling to work (because they want to and not for advertisement), when the bicycle becomes the standard for travelling, when city mayors, and kings and queens are not afraid of a little sweat and exercise, when solidarity emerges from the great energy pool we are all immersed in, then we shall be one step closer to liberty and peace for all.

The car (whether metaphorically as being transported and screened from the outside, or literally as the great gas guzzler, polluter, and merchant of speed), we must bear in mind, is the (often concealed) catalyst behind many of the world's current crises and conflicts. The car is in effect the harbinger of war and suffering. The internal combustible engine is not something 'out there' with four wheels and a price tag, but, emphatically, 'in there', price-less, and with more horsepower, if you can learn to harness it, than you can shake a stick at.

Socialism can only arrive by bicycle...

Bob Dylan's Bicycle

This wet May afternoon whilst trying to escape a thorough soaking, I came across some Bob Dylan paintings in a small gallery in Prince's Square. They were quite recent too, with a playful edge to them, paintings of rail tracks, wooden houses, countryside scenes... and a bicycle! Naturally, it was the latter picture that drew my attention. Obviously Bob, in his more mature years, has, like those at the other end of the age spectrum, come to realize the inherent 'wisdom' vested in a bicycle, the kind of wisdom that, when conjoined with its 'engine', empties the mind of all that artificial drip-fed nonsense that we face on a daily basis. The bicycle, like the rail track I suppose, is an emptying device, a sort of spiritual duster, that, through clearing away the clutter, renews our lost connections with the world we inhabit. Bob has tuned into this, so here it is, far away from desolation row, The Bicycle:

Bob Dylan's The Bicycle

The Avian Cyclist

Inspired by a drawing called Bird on a Bike by the Dutch artist Karel Appel, I thought I would do my own, but this time I would call it, not 'bird on a bike' (why on earth would a bird be on a bicycle?!) but simply, The Cyclist for those particular avian and aerodynamic attributes of the driver in question. 

I have already made allusions to the soaring quality of the cyclist and bicycle, and his likeness to 'bird', so here it is, in all its feathered glory: The Avian Cyclist -

Just check that suspension out!

'The Cyclist'

The Man who Mistook his Bicycle for a Horse

From a train the observant traveller can get a general view of the state of crops, the abundance or otherwise, of the harvest, the progress of cultivation and the varying types of soil... On a cycling or walking tour one comes right up against them; and those who elect to take a riding expedition through the lanes and byways of the land, will find matters of interest for their inquiring minds in every hedge, every dry stone wall, every gate and every cottage.

[Col. Rainsford-Hannay, Dry Stone Walling]

Like a horse, a cycling expedition (accompanied with that inquiring mind) reveals much along the way. Cometary intrusions, haphazard encounters, chance, serendipity... they all come into play when out on a horse or a bicycle. It's the ease of one's melding with the open. We are after all out in it, this open.

Unlike the car (the 'tin can' if you will), the equine bicycle does not cause deaths, does not instigate wars, and does not vaporise the interstitial. On the contrary, the bicycle revitalises, reconnects, and re-inserts the organic body-mind back into its greater matrix from which it had been unnaturally wrenched. 

Health returns quickly to a man with a horse...

Old Kilpatrick to Dumbarton via Loch Humphrey & The Doughnot

What a great route this is! To be sure, the initial part up the Loch Humphrey path involves a fairly steep climb but it's a good excuse to get off the bike and walk. The views across the Clyde estuary and southwards from halfway up are simply incredible.

Once up at Loch Humphrey take the west side trail that leads into the conifer plantation towards Greenlands Reservoir No.1. This is an idyllic little lake walled in by spruce trees and redolent of the small dystrophic lakes of north-east Poland. It is superbly peaceful too.

Follow the path round and at the fork take the left trail towards Rigganower Farm (do not take the circular crags path). As a small diversion you could go right for a few hundred metres to Black Linn Reservoir where the peculiar knoll called the Doughnot stands. It is a relatively easy climb to its summit since by now, on the Kilpatrick plateau, we are almost three quarters of the way up it already. The views all around are spectacular and worthy of the 40 minute or so detour.

On top of the Doughnot


At Rigganower Farm, and in spite of the signs informing us not to pass through and take instead the field path, hop the fence and cycle through taking you onto the road which leads all the way down to Milton. Take care as the road is steep and crumbly, and there may be large trucks to deal with which are working the quarry. At Milton there are a couple of fine houses, old and new. At the bottom of the road where it joins another, take a sharp right up to the wonderfully grey gothic Overtoun House. Here, we can take refreshments before carrying on down to Dumbarton, passing another eye-catching building in the Police Headquarters, and the train station to take us home. All in all, depending on your pace, the route can take the best part of a day, or if not prone to lying in the grass and listening to insects, a few hours.

 Overtoun House