Drumfrochar to Paisley Canal via the Gryffe Valley and Bridge of Weir

Again, I have to praise the little 'back-line' that runs to and from Paisley Canal to Glasgow Central. From my eyrie in Cessnock, it means I can jump across the motorway and be at Dumbreck station in less than five minutes. Another blissful 13 minutes or so takes me through the corridor of a hundred thousand trees to Paisley Canal. From here, I merely freewheel down the hill to Paisley's other station, the grand Gilmour Street, where a train arrives within minutes to whisk me and Pegasus off to Drumfrochar. The bottom line is that this means if I leave my gaff at 10.10am, I am here before 11am. Amazing really! The train (or the 'travelling lounge' as I like to call it) is a great way to extend your home range.

On the above map just follow the red line out of the station at Drumfrochar. I took the red way onto the B788 which ends up going past the 'Jesus Saves' sign below, but it's a busy little road at times and Christ almost died for our sins again when another brainless SUV driver pulling a trailer decided he could overtake me on a bend and not worry about the car that was just approaching from the other direction (which of course he couldn't see). So, the blue line is way emptier and safer and still leads us down to the sustrans path which will take us back to Paisley.

Surely, one of the great train station exits in the known universe, the view over the estuary from Drumfrochar Station . Our path is not down the way towards the sea but in the other direction up into the moors, via the Old Largs Road. And it's a belter! A bit like life itself, the way ahead is steep to start with but soon levels off. There are a couple of bends where if you are coming down the other way can be a little hairy (as in 'make sure your brakes are in good nick!). As I was heaving up this glorious morning some nutball in a mountain-bike over-shot the bend and ended up missing me by a couple of feet or so (mostly down to my expert manoevring and perceptual capabilities [ahem], but it could have ended in tears for both of us. As I always say, you could be the safest cyclist in the world, but all it takes is some jobby in a car (or on another bike!!) to put an end to all that. Thankfully though, this is a rare experience and I did see the funny side of it, especially a few seconds later as he and his bike parted company and he vaulted a hedge I had just passed, ending up in a field full of stationary, startled sheep.

Passing the golf course (Whinhill) and Corlic Hill to the  left as we head straight ahead up towards the reservoir. An alternate route would be to take the wee path up to Corlic Hill (it goes all the way up practically), and cycle down carefully the other side joining up with the road at the eastern end of the Gryffe Reservoir. Last August I came the other way and what a beautiful hill it is. You can find the post and pics from the top here:

http://cyclingmeditations.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/paisley-canal-to-greenock-via-corlick.html

I'm not ready yet to die for your sins, so consider taking the much quieter road (marked in blue on the map above).

From Govan to Irvine via Barrhead, Uplawmoor, Stewarton & Kilmaurs

 

 From my humble gaff in Cessnock, it's a hop across the motorway and through the enchanted Pollok Country Park (what a way to start a cycle!)for the catapult train to Barrhead. At my age (and with my wisdom) a little push on a long ride goes a long way. At any rate, I love trains, and they are always empty when I set out (around 10-11am). They are, moreover, pretty reasonably priced. And considering the size and spread of Glasgow's urban rail network, it's a pretty good way to extend your home range.The train from the idyllic Pollokshaws West train station (just at the south-eastern entrance of the park) to Barrhead takes roughly 15 minutes...

The only tricky part here is entering Irvine. Keep your eyes peeled for signs to the train station. It's pretty well marked but it can get a little confusing as we try to negotiate the Industrial quarter and its roundabouts and flyovers...

From the Gateside Road looking south. The little green mound in the distance is Knockmade plantation which we will skirt around in a wee while...

Just past the curiously named Spunkie farm (just outside Uplawmoor), a bench of serenity being overtaken by the verge... this road is quiet quiet quiet!!!

Up close & personal - Knockmade plantation, or is it 'wood'?

Llama at Linnhead!

Looking back (north) towards the wooded knoll of Knockenae Plantation with Neilston Pad barely visible on its right.

A rare female cyclist passing the Smuggler's Inn as we pass through Stewarton.

The lovely little town of Kilmaurs, whose loveliness has sadly been destroyed by too many roads and too many cars passing through it.

A wet and dreich Kilmaurs.

All in all, a beautiful route, made even beautifuller if you've got a tailwind. Some exquisite back-roads that haven't seen a car in yonks! And some interesting little towns (Uplawmoor, Stewarton, Kilmaurs..., even Irvine once you get past the ring-road!)

My Home Range

It occurred to me the other day when asked why I cycle where I do - as 'what the underlying 'purpose' was - that I wasn't quite sure. Was I so disaffected with the workaday world and its dialectic of toil and recovery (a general entropic cause and effect cycle) that I sought another dialectic - that of locomotion and energization?

Or was it that, having lived in many different countries as a consequence of teaching English as a foreign language, I had, in the spirit of the German cobbler Jakob Boehm, gone through hell (I have lived in some of the most bleak places on the planet, notably, Libya, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia,  and a winter in Atyrau in Kazakhstan!!] and now saw heaven in the form of the bucolic and pastoral shires of rolling farm and woodland?

Both are valid as answers. Yet, I was also interested in the idea of home, not as a construct, but as a natural process, more verb than noun. What is home (in the large, open-ended sense), and what does it mean 'to home'.

The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze caught my attention when he spoke of the 'sacred right of migration' and I wondered how we were different (if at all) from the birds and the animals at large, and their 'home'. Frugality, I had worked out, springs from flowing. Flowering (humans are plants after all!) is a function of this flowing - a natural flow that is not predicated upon the non-essential, but on the hyper-organic energization of the animal being.

And then, I realized, after watching a buzzard above the braes, that that was what I was doing...!
I was, fundamentally, patrolling my home range. A home range that was essentially an integral part of who I was. After all, organism and environment are not separate.

Belonging is a matter of knowing place. To know place is to belong. And I'm not just talking about where the local offy is. It's a matter of seeing yourself through other forms. Whether it be rivers or hills, coastlines or seas, outwith the coagulated and incestuous identity that man has made for himself.

In all parts of Nature, there is a fundamental flow that conjoins you with her. I guess then I cycle to flow, and to home.

Heimat and habitat, like space and peace, are intimately related.

Croy to Milngavie via the End of the World

This is the route that kicked it all off.... The back-road into the universe one dreary Saturday afternoon. I keep coming back to it, not least because of the serenity of the road itself, but also because of those looming primordial forms of the fells, forms like Tomtain, Meikle Bin, Dungoil...

And also the mere fact that from Queen Street by train, it takes just 12 minutes to get there!

This time instead of finishing at Lenzie and training it back from there I decided to go the other way once I reached Lennoxtown, towards Milgavie. To be honest there's not much difference in terms of mileage or quality. Either makes a good finishing point.

The starting point here is Croy train station, the start of the pink line on the right of the map. Head down through Kilsyth and then onto the Tak Ma Doon high road. Follow the outer pink line unless you want to get up the Meikle Bin (the highest point in the whole Campsie range) in which case take the inner one into the Carron Valley (MTBs only). As I mentioned, when you get down to Lennoxtown, head west instead of east on the lovely Thomas Muir walk-cycle-way until Strathblane where you head up the Old Mugdock Road, through Mugdock, and down the other side to Milngavie train station.

From the quiet B818, a couple of keen fishermen in the Carron Reservoir with the misshapen forms of the fells in the background.

Already the head is part of the horizon... From the B818, with the Meikle and Little Bins right behind my head...

Heading down to Fintry... with Dungoil on the distant left, and the Corrie of Balglas on the distant right.

An old codger on a road bike heading up the B822 (the Campsie Glen road) which will take us past Dungoil (pictured) and various other hills as we chisel our way through the Campsie range to Lennoxtown.

Allow a good few hours for the route assuming you are not a head-down sort of guy. There is no reason to have your head down anyways. This route is made for pausing, slow-cycling, and gazing through God's windows...

Larkhall to Thorntonhall via Quarter, Earnockmuir, Auldhouse & Jackton

Again, a pretty self-explanatory route passing through some quiet open country to the south of East Kilbride. I have already done 2 other posts on this blog starting from Larkhall via Stonehouse and Chapleton, and another one going via Strathaven, both ending up in Glasgow, but this one is a little different.

Although the Larkhall to Thortonhall route is a little shorter and a little less lovely than the Larkhall to Eaglesham route via Strathaven, it is nevertheless a fine route, that passes through a couple of quite interesting little neuks, and enjoys plenty of open vistas across the valley and further east towards Edinburgh. The roads are for the most part country lanes but there are a couple of hairy moments that you do have to watch out for.

The quiet back road up towards Thinacres Farm...

Quarter's aesthetically pleasing 'Booling Club'

 The first of these neuks is the village of Quarter, that looks as if it has added a dormitory to its originally petite size. It is a fine little village with some fine bungalows, and a fine church that you pass as you head out and towards Limekilnburn. Quarter is the sort of place you pass through and people wave to you, the window-cleaners, the postman, the vicar, the old wifie coming back from the Spar with her messages, in spite of the fact that they've never seen you before and do not know you from Adam. Yet, i think this is the crux of it: it is because you are a stranger that they wave!  Small places like this have generally managed to stave off modernity's un-ease, and topsy-turviness, so that hospitality has not become so institutionalised, and is still very much organic, just like it was in the old days. It is this 'hospitality' that, white van man  and SUV woman aside, keeps me coming back to these old roads and old places. In the city, we are required to switch off our primal response and recognition systems (for if we didn't we would probably spontaneously combust) and replace them with secondary systems that have been cleverly tweaked by the market. In this way, we can walk through a busy street and not see anyone let alone wave to them and recognise their presence.This is a very imppiortatnt point that I have learned from cycling around the shires, and which again contradicts the market philosophy. That the most interesting people you will likely meet are not your 'friends' but are people you have never met before: the strangers bringing tidings from other lands. Let's face it, you've heard everything your freinds have got to say, maybe several times... but the words of strangers.... now that could be interesting.

 

Quarter's church.

Passing through Limekilnburn, (what a lovely name !), was a shock to the system in the same way passing through any village or hamlet is that has had its heart torn out by ratcheting a motorway through it. For me all roads that have a national speed 'limit'  are motorways regardless of how many lanes they have. This one only has two, just a main road really, but the speed and the thunder of some of these trucks hurtling through was a real shock. Considering how close some of the homes were to this hurtling. Absolutely appalling architectural design and road-planning.

Thankfully though we are just crossing over it and not going along it. There is a short, maybe half a kilometre, stretch on the main road, but thankfully it is downhill and we're not on it for long. We take the turn at Viewfield Reservoir (marked on map) and head along until the left turn takes us up the very tranquil road towards Earnockmuir Farm.

Passing through Earnockmuir Farm... ;)

Looking across to Eaglesham from the Hayhill Road.

Passing through the hamlet of Hayhill.

Looking down onto Thorntonhall train station.

Platform to Platform: Paisley Canal to Gourock

There's no need for a map here as the route is so clearly way-marked that even a blind man could follow it. It starts at Paisley Canal platform which conjoins with the sustrans national route no. 75. Here we begin a 20 mile odd journey, mostly flat, through open countryside via the old dismantled railway line, now a tranquil herbaceous corridor of wildflowers (myself included), shrubs and trees.

Approaching Kilmacolm...

Above Port Glasgow...

The Freeway (dredger) starting its long journey into Glasgow (George V dock near Braehead).

Cyclist and birds have a lot in common ;) [On the esplanade at Gourock]

The beautiful mediterraneanesque Gourock Bay. Just a little further on is the train station, another station whose platform appears to merge with the cycle path. All in all, at a steady though never frenetic pace, a few hours of bliss, and thinking I'm somewhere on the Algarve...