The Meditative Cyclist

 I am no scientist. I explore the local. 

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

A cyclist (someone who cycles, someone who is aware of his/her involvement in cycles) is always meditative. All the others 'cyclists' are simply speed-merchants no better than car-drivers who treat cycling as a means to an end. Cycling, however, for the MC, is both a means and an end in itself. At any rate, just checking out the Trek website today (in order to register my new Trek bike) I am confronted in bold black letters 'The Future is Faster'. I might actually go one better and say (in equally bold and black letters) that 'The Future is Picnoleptic' (that is, so fast that people cannot think anymore). At any rate, my sort of cycling is never about speed, just as it is never about slowness. It is rather about using your own steam to explore the local, to find your way, and to understand place (moving from a variety of perspectives towards the panoptic). This trinity of locomoting, locating, and locus is all you need to reach 'God'. When you in-source your own engines (brain, heart, body) and become responsive to them (as they do to you), there is no need for 'Christ'. One has become christened and anointed simply by this enactive natural involvement of the self. So, the future may well be faster for many, but not for me. For me, the future will always be the future: an illusory realm of action that never ever comes. For me, and for the meditative cyclist, there is no future as there is no past and there is no present. All there is, in actuality, is being alive and being somehow conjoined in a grand matrix of conviviality to reveal place and person as one and the same.

Paisley Canal to Greenock via Corlick Hill

What a beautiful route this is! And what a beautiful summer's day to inaugurate it! [23rd August 2015]

I am constantly amazed at how easily it is to get out into the countryside from where I am in Cessnock (almost the centre of the city!). I dive over Paisley Road West and the motorway, cross a wee path and a field full of wildflowers and buzzing creatures by Bellahouston Secondary School and there I am at Dumbreck station, or 'the station of ten thousand trees' as I like to call it. Once on the train, I open my flask, open my map, and enjoy the 12 minute journey through a corridor of a million trees to Paisley Canal. This little line itself, once in danger of closing, is a peach! From Dumbreck, we pass through a moss (Mosspark), by a hill (Corkerhill), a castle (Crookston), and a hawk (Hawkhead). This line is as much about the temporal as it is the spatial, but then, when you do as much wayfaring as I do, you soon learn that there is no difference between space and time.

Anyhoo....

The trip more or less begins at Quarrier's Village since we have covered the sustrans path from Paisley before. It's about 7 miles from Paisley Canal along the marvellous sustrans path to here. A great warmer if ever there were one, before heading out onto the bucolic backroads of Inverclyde.

Just follow the blue line from Quarrier's Village up to the road leading up to Gryffe Reservoir.

Then, over Corlick Hill (there is a tarmac road down the west side of the hill past Whitelees Cottage), down to Drumfrochar, and then up the road to the French Monument.

The main avenue in Quarrier's Village.

The whaleback outline of Hill of Stake (from Hattrick Farm) which we were up two days ago. Now I can't go anywhere without seeing its illustrious greywacke profile.

The inimitable Caircurran (t bun) Hill from the organic B788 road.

You've been telt!  I thought  was in the bible belt for a minute until I realized I was just passing through Inverclyde!

On the quiet B788 just before the turn-off to the Gryffe Reservoirs. You can see Corlick Hill just to the left of the sign. The hill on the right is Lurg Moor where the Romans once had an observation post.

For a moment I thought that was Christopher Walken & Jane Fonda coming towards me (see previous post 'Cycling in Cinema') on this beautiful back road up to Gryffe Reservoir. Not so sure about recumbent bicycles - they just look too awkward and 'dodgy' (though truth be told I have never ridden one).

At the foot of the Corlick Hill path, a path that isn't as pathy as perhaps it should be, but is nonetheless a lot easier than the bog and heathland of many surrounding hills. The sign tells us that it is 1.5km to the summit (303m). Allow an hour or so (with bike), 30-40 minutes if simply on foot.

There really is nothing quite like carrying yourself and your bike over a hill. The view south from the summit of Corlick Hill over Gryffe Reservoir to Creuch Hill et al.

Passing Drumfrochar Station, looking down towards Greenock.

The Free French Memorial above Greenock & Gourock, dedicated to all the poor (French) bastards that died during the Atlantic campaign in WWI.

The road down to Greenock West from the Free French Monument. Beautiful! You can freewheel all the way down to Greenock West train station, or if you fancy, you can continue on into Greenock proper and admire the immaculate mural of the Glaswegian artist Charles Anderson on the front of the former Greenock Library (see below), as well as some very fine old stone buildings.

Charles Anderson did various murals like these in Glasgow. You've probably seen at least one of them but can't remember where. Think Charing X, or Kelvin Hall...

Hill of Stake

Follow the yellow circular from the Visitor Centre along the mine path initially. As an alternative to coming back down the Raith glen, you could walk up to Mistylaw and follow the dotted line back down. Although someone at the Visitor Centre suggested 3 hours to do this circular I quickly found out that it was going to be close to 5. I decided at East Girt Hill to head straight back down the glen. The yellow route took me a good four (with two 15 minute breaks).

The last time I was up in the Muirshiel wilds I heard an old-timer ask about the route towards Hill of Stake (Dracula's most feared hill!), and the highest point of the Inverclyde-Mistylaw-Queenside hill-moor system. And so, having had the thought planted in my mind, I came up this morning with a view to getting up it. The initial road up to the Visitor Centre is a 3 mile beauty with tantalising views of the hill in question eking out into the sky in the distance.

Looking up towards Hill of Stake in the grey distance from the 3 mile road that leads up to Muirshiel Visitor Centre.

From left to right: Little Craig Minnan, Craig Minnan, and Windyhill.

At the end of the barytes mine trail and the beginning of the climb into Hill of Stake. It took one hour of walking to get here from the Visitor Centre and it will take another hour of walking to get to the summit of Hill of Stake. 

From Hill of Stake looking west towards Arran and Cumbrae.

Hill of Stake from East Girt Hill

Looking back down the Raith Burn Glen towards the Visitor Centre (where the woods are). It's a helluva trudge from here to there, in and out of corries and avoiding heather-covered burns which could easily involve broken bones if not seen in time. At the end I even had to brave walking through the river. By that time my feet were so wet that it made little difference. It took two good hours of spritely (as spritely as you can walking through bogs and heathland) trudging to get back down to the Visitor Centre and dry solid land. This sort of walking takes so much out of you that, inevitably, part of you forever stays on that hillside (and part of that hillside forever stays with you). All I can say is thank god for lucozade and the fine weather. If it had been misty and wet as it is usually, I may have remained up there in my entirety!

Return to the Whangie

Every so often I try to make the pilgrimage up to the Whangie and Auchineden Hill. The views from the humble summit towards the north are stupendous! And if you're into rocks, and geological oddities, then the Whangie is for you. You can almost feel the glaciers flowing as you stand and take in those mind-bending landscapes.

This time, (I have abandoned the usual route up the Stockiemuir Road because of the madcap speed merchants that use it), I took the rather sedate and car-free route along the West Highland Way which I know well (on the map, the darker blue line). I nicked around the back of Carbeth Loch and Carbeth House out onto the Blanefield Road where you turn left, head past the quaint Carbeth huts and out onto the Stockiemuir Road. This little stretch of road (about 1km to Queen's View Car Park) is not too bad even if it is uphill. Upon arriving at the car park, tether your bike to anything you can (Stirling Council still haven't provided a bike rack!!) and head up the well-worn path to the top of the hill. 

You can, if it's dry enough, follow the red-dotted line down the other end and onto the path to the west of Burncrooks Reservoir and then come back to the car park via Auchineden House, but it is marshy and boggy, so expect wet feet if you do. Otherwise, just come down the way you went up.

The Carbeth Huts off the Blanefield Road

Some of the large boulders that pepper the west side of the Whangie & Auchineden Hill

The cairn on the west side of Auchineden Hill, looking north to Loch Lomond and the Highlands

 

Looking west to the Campsie Fells and Dumgoyne, Dumfoyne, Earl's Seat et al.

Corkindale Law & Howcraigs Hill

Corkindale Law (probably Norse) is a whalebacked hill that contains at its southern end the forested Caldwell Law too. The former is easy enough to get to, following a faint path up from the hamlet of Banklug, but the latter requires a little dancing around swampy patches as the path disappears in parts as it approaches Caldwell Law.

Again, I started off at Pollokshaws West train station and caught the train to Barrhead. Like Kilpatrick station, Barrhead station sits at the foot of a hill, and is ideally placed for us cyclists who like an invigorating start to the day. From the top right of the map follow the Gateside Road up (the dark blue line merging into the red one) and just continue heading up and in a south-westerly direction past the farmsteads of the Lochliboside Hills. It is beautifully peaceful and the views across the vale are expansive. At the last house of Banklug, tether the bike and head up to the trig point of Corkindale Law. It'll take about 20 minutes. 

To get to Caldwell Law, return down to Banklug and continue along the little farm path to Finniebrae where you can head up and onto a 'path' that follows through a field to the other end of this whaleback. From there, just follow the red line down past Caldwell Tower and through Uplawmoor where there is a lovely hotel full of nice things to drink and eat (if you are daft enough not to bring your own supplies!). This road will take you round to Howcraigs Hill where there is another faint path past Braeface Farm up to the top. 

The quaint village of Uplawmoor

 Looking across to Corkindale Law and Banklug (halfway up the hill) from Shillford

Looking down from Howcraigs Hill over Neilston towards Glasgow...

Getting back to Glasgow is pretty easy: you can take a train from Neilston, or you can carry on down the road a bit to Barrhead and get the train back from there, or, you can just cycle it. It's a beautiful ride along the Old Kirkton Road just before Neilston and down through Balgray Reservoir and Dams & Darnley Country Park (see previous post 'pollokshaws-west-loop-via-duncarnock' for route map).

The Joy of Wayfaring

The practice of drawing has little to do woth the projection of images and everything to do with wayfaring. 

Tim Ingold  Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge & Description

This whole blog if you haven’t figured it out already is about wayfaring: about moving under your own steam, about finding things out for yourself, about originating being. To be sure, there are clues and hints that can be garnered along the way from others, from things, but to allow these others or these things to do it for you is tantamount to ontogical death if not a biological one. Vitality I have learned does not simply mean being alive. It means being attuned  - attuned Being - to the nexus of aliveness that you are involved in. Movement is everything. As Wallace Stevens once wrote: Life is Motion.

This motion is a moving of one’s own accord, not a kowtowing to someone else’s. It is original being, original thinking (original non-thinking), original moving. That is to say that the moving originates inside you. As a contrast, driving a car obviates this original moving, as does following rules and regulations that have not first been set straight in one’s own head.

To blindly allow someone else, or something else, to rule your state of aliveness is simply madness, and yet, this is what the modern world is all about, being told what to do, and when to do it, what to wear and where to wear it. The genius, as Jose Ortega Y Gasset once said, is he who devises his own work.

The work being the engine and the origin.

There is no other work.

And so here, in an effort to find my self deeper in the Way, some drawings…. some wayfaring… some original Being!

On the beach at Irvine.

Sophisticated Seagulls!

From Lochend hill.

Above Port Glasgow

Barochan Hill

From the Kilpatrick Braes looking south (that's Hewlitt Packard down there!)

Barrhead to Bellahouston via Harelaw and Glenburn Reservoirs

The route here begins bottom left at Barrhead train station and follows the red line up into the hills behind Paisley before descending into and around the east side of Paisley and into Rosshall Park (centre top) where the cycle path will lead you to Bellahouston Park from where you can survey the trip you have just completed.

Again, following a beautiful cycle through Pollok Country Park to the train station (Pollokshaws West), and a 12 minute journey on the train, I arrive at Barrhead, literally as its name suggests at the head of the hills, and right at the foot of the Gateside Road which will take us up into the Fereneze Braes.

Just be careful for the little turn-off onto Hillside Road about 200 metres after you start your climb on Gateside Road, (there's an enormous house with an an enormous monkey puzzle tree that can act as a sign!)


The road is steep but no problem for my new Trek. I get halfway up and ask a couple working in their garden if I'm on the right path (I know I'm on the right path, I just want to know if they are). I ask them how far Harelaw Reservoir is. Typically, they don't know. She mentions the one (actually Harelaw 'Dam') over there in Neilston. Then he tells me that this road is a dead end (ending in Woodneuk Farm). I point at the bike and my feet and suggest that the term 'dead end' applies only to cars and closed minds. I bid them good gardening, and continue up and around past Woodneuk Farm and up onto the Fereneze plateau via a little farm path. So far so good...

And the views are amazing!

Excellent views from Hillside Road leading to Neilston Pad and Knockenae Plantation (the little bunnet-shaped hill to the right).

Looking over Fereneze Golf Course and Harelaw Reservoir into the valley.

There are a couple of walking paths up here to various locales (check out Glennifer Braes map online). I headed with bike down the wall here to Glenburn Reservoir and took a left along a muddy path around the reservoir (see dotted red line on map above) to the little huts in the distance where the path comes out onto a lane. The views are incredible all the way along.

The view down the B774 towards Paisley (Paisley Canal train station is a five minute cycle from here, and Barrhead station is a ten minute cycle in the other direction).

You could easily cycle back to Barrhead train station (or equally Paisley Canal station) and call it a day there, but since I only live in Cessnock I decided to cycle back home joining the cycle path at Rosshall Park five minutes from here.

Coming back through Bellahouston Park (I normally pop into the leisure centre for a refreshing swim) I can survey from its hill where I have just been. With a pair of binoculars you can literally see individual trees that you passed up there on the Fereneze Braes (which is that lump of land right in front). Getting your bearings is fundamental to being alive in the world (orienting-navigating organically and not technologically). Maps, notebooks & binoculars are a meditative cyclist's best friend!