Conversations at the Traffic Lights

 That's me & Pegasus on the right ;)

This would never happen in a car. But when two cyclists meet at a stop light it's perhaps inevitable that they will strike up a conversation. I've had two such encounters in as many days here in Glasgow. Yesterday, at the junction of Alison Street and Polloshaws Road where I commented on the ancient nature of my fellow cyclist's bike and we had a momentary chuckle at how 'it gets you there', and 'no need for any of this fancy stuff'.  And today, at the crossroads of Byres Road and Hyndland Road it was a guy in some of that fancy stuff who looked across and commented on the weather (as it had been raining for a while). I asked him how much his helmet camera was. A hundred and fifty quid he told me. Been knocked off his bike last year and the driver drove on.

Encounters like these are little reminders that cycling is complete openness, whether to other cyclists at traffic lights, or the rain and the elements, or boy-racers testing their delusions of invincibility. Indeed, one could argue that, more than walking, cycling has the added kudos of being a praiseworthy way of travelling which rivals the car and public transport for inner city commuting. You never know with a walker in the city whether their car is parked just around the corner. To be sure, cyclists have cars too, but not when they're out on the bike. Furthermore, there is, especially in a city like Glasgow which due to its precipitous (and precipitational) nature, cycling is not like it is in London or Amsterdam, Berlin or Stockholm. As such, there is an affinity between cyclists that you meet along the way. As I write this, I am in fact surprised at how few encounters I have with cyclists at traffic lights compared to say London where every set of lights appears to have a few cyclists hanging around. If I had to cycle in cities like London or Amsterdam I might not be so keen to share a few words with fellow cyclists at traffic lights, for then the experience would not be, as it is in Glasgow, so unique or quirky. Or responsive.

Whatever the case, I can see from the body language of onlookers that a pair of cyclists having an impromptu chinwag at the traffic lights is something quite special and extra-ordinary. The sort of thing that you would never see with two car drivers (unless it was howling abuse).

Pegasus the Wonder Bike

This weblog would be a little wanting if I didn't at least dedicate an entry to Pegasus the wonder bike, my trusty blue and yellow Cannondale which has stood by my side since I inherited it from my brother some 12 years ago. My brother had bought it several years before that, some time around 1998, which would put it at about 16 years old, which for a bicycle, some might say, is pretty old. I simply say that she is as young as the day she came out that handmade workshop. If you look after anything well enough, show it enough love and attention, time (as far as decay is concerned) struggles to gain a foothold, and this has been the case with Pegasus. I look after her, and she looks after me!

At around 7kg in weight, and made of aluminium, Pegasus appears to be a fitting name. That and the fact that Rabbie Burns used to have a horse called Pegasus. Poetry comes to those who move through the world and let the world move through them. 

So, here's to Pegasus, and to me (!), for we are a unit only together. Indeed, as a symbiosis, perhaps the bicycle can educate us as to the hidden connections that we are involved in yet do not see, and render us (an energy-profligate nation) more energy and eco-literate.

I am convinced from my relationship with Pegasus that if everyone cycled their way from place to place instead of driving, the world as a whole would be in a much better shape.

P-eigg-asus... heading down to Cleadale (On the Isle of Eigg looking across to Rum)

In the Russian Cemetery, Warsaw...

Atop Auchineden (The Whangie)

Millport Beach (looking across to Arran)

Pegasus & Haystack at Harelaw Dam

Cycling & Reading

Twice happy he who. not mistook, 
Hath read in Nature's mystic book.

[Andrew Marvell, Upon Appleton House]


There are many books and people who have inspired me to learn more of my habitat and the shires (Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, Dunbartonshire, Stirlingshire, and Ayrshire) which surround and perforate the city where I live. Moreover, my own travels abroad have inspired me to discover more of the greater area in which I grew up and have a close land-relationship.

Many fellow travellers and champions of the local have confirmed what I have always intuited: that land and body are one, and that climate and mind are one. To be sure, now in the era of air-travel and speed, the idea of the local is soon dismissed. But it needn't be. 'Wonder, like charity,' writes Hugh McDonald in Rambles Round Glasgow in the 1850s, 'should begin at home.'

Anyway, these thoughts aside, here is a list of books that have engaged and inspired my own local cyclings around Glasgow:

H. McDonald, Rambles Round Glasgow in the 1850s

T.C.F. Brotchie, Some Sylvan Scenes Near Glasgow

T.C.F Brotchie, Glasgow Rivers and Streams

J.F. Anderson, The Country Houses, Castles & Mansions of Renfrewshire

J. Hood, The Country Houses, Castles & Mansions of Dunbartonshire

S. Hothersall, Archaeology Round Glasgow

G. Mason, The Castles of Glasgow & The Clyde

K. White, On Scottish Ground

R. Sutcliffe, Wildlife Around Glasgow

A. McIntosh, Soil & Soul

D. Semple, Joy in Living; A Free Man’s Philosophy

A. Cramb, Fragile Land: Scotland’s Environment

I.C. Lees, The Campsies and the Land of Lennox

D. Alexander & G. McCrae, Renfrewshire: A Scottish County’s Hidden Past

F.A. Walker, The South Clyde Estuary: An Illustrated Architectural Guide

E.B. Wilkie, 25 Cycle Routes in and around Glasgow

N. Shepherd, The Living Mountain

J. Dickson, The Wild Plants of Glasgow 

Butterfly Conservation Scotland, Butterflies & Day-flying moths of Glasgow

F.Mort, Dumbartonshire (also, Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire)


And many of the 'Old Glasgow' series of books by John Hood, Sandra Malcolm, et al.

These are just a fraction of the books that have formed (or perhaps, unformed) my mind. I cannot thank Glasgow City Council library system (and by extension, Andrew Carnegie) enough for some of the gems they have thrown forth. Equally, the 12 floors of wonder at Glasgow University Library, and the Glasgow Room in the Mitchell Library, have provided me with days of unfettered bliss in opening my eyes to the world and beyond. Also, the Heritage Centre in Saltcoats for providing me with two very hard to find books by Dugald Semple, and the collective libraries of Dunbartonshire, Ayrshire and Lanarkshire for just being there. A world without libraries is a world without world, and I consider myself more just a little fortunate for having been born into a country where libraries are still considered important.

That being said, and to paraphrase Andrew Marvell, Nature’s book itself, though at times difficult to read beneath the side-notes of man, is perhaps the finest ‘book’ of them all, and it's only by getting out there under our own steam, whether cycling, walking or crawling, with plenty of pauses along the way, that we will be able to decipher its cryptic and mystic messages.

Level 5 Glasgow University Library : Biology, Botany, Zoology.