The Kilsyth-Carron Valley Pilgrimage via Mount Kailas
I'm getting a little ahead of myself here as I haven't actually cycled this route (yet). Perhaps it's a sign of the magnetism of the fells that finds me writing this up before it's done, maybe it's the anticipation that the fells imbue in all those who enter them. Whatever the case, the fells are a sacred place, and this is marked by my twinning of its highest point the Meikle Bin with Tibet's holy Mount Kailas which I expounded upon in the last post.
The pilgrimage around the Meikle Bin can be done in a variety of ways, but in keeping with the general length of the original circuit around Kailas (32 miles), I suggest this route here.
I haven't yet measured it but it can't be far off the 32 mile mark, maybe a little more. But it sure is a spiritual experience, or as I like to call it, 'an afternoon at the end of the world'.
Try it. See if you agree...
The Supreme Breathing Process
Having just cycled from Croy to Milngavie via the Carron Valley with a headwind all the way save for the initial climb up the Tak Ma Doon, I am inclined to believe that, in the spirit of the Austrian (bicycling) philosopher Karlfried Durckheim who wrote this:
The earth is a supreme breathing process.
The holy Mount Kailas of the Strathclyde region, the highest point in the fells, the almost conical Meikle Bin. I can barely see its top from my fourth floor living room in Cessnock, and each time I do this route and encircle it, I consider it as a sort of prayer. Mount Kailas I should add is a sacred mountain in Tibet (Lord Shiva, the destroyer of illusion and ignorance resides at the top), whose 32 mile basal circumference is regularly encircled by pilgrims, (if you circled the Meikle Bin by the two drove roads on either side, the Crow and Tak Ma Doon, and used the connecting B818 and the A891 + A803 roads, it would probably register a similar mileage).
Prayer, Wendell Berry said, was 'work done in gratitude'.
Prayer needn't mean organized religion and all the dogma that comes with it. Prayer (as pilgrimage) is simply a matter of moving under your own steam. Of sweating a little.
Of joining in on that breathing supreme!
The old stone bridge on the Tak Ma Doon...almost at the top!
The old stone bridge over the Endrick Water on the very quiet B818, a few kilometres from Fintry...
The view of the Campsie Fells (presiding beyond industry, science, art and knowledge) from my fourth floor living room... There's something very strange and interesting about cycling round your horizon.
100% Proof : Embodying the Draught
Distilling is beautiful. First of all, because it is a slow, philosophic, and silent occupation, which keeps you busy but gives you time to think of other things, somewhat like riding a bike.
Primo Levi, The Periodic Table
Should you desire the great tranquillity, be prepared to sweat white beads. Hakuin
Sweating is under-rated. It is a form of distillation, of purification, and of removing the impurities from the system. Anyone with a basic knowledge of distilling spirits or fermenting wine will be aware of the similarities between purifying a liquid and purifying a bodymind. The key is movement, moving liquid, moving bodymind.
When I lived in Warsaw, I wrote an essay about it, this sweating and distilling... this dripping. Here is the crux of it. I called it Vodka Nirvana, the vodka here referring not to the alcoholic spirit but to the literal translation from the Polish as 'little water':
The brain (untreated) is energised until it reaches its boiling point and begins to vaporize. Once all of the thought in the brain has vaporized, the vapour is led into the cerebral cortex whereupon the cooling thought reverts to the thinking form in a clear state. It can then be poured directly from the brain.
Because the distillation process can never ensure a complete separation between thought and other materials, the process is often repeated one or more times with the treated thought. Many ‘draughts’ (the penultimate of which is sometimes referred to as ‘art’) have been vaporized and distilled (re-draughted) many times over.
Only at the point of the last refinement will one notice that there is no ‘draught’ as such any longer, only pure essence, pure spirit. This we refer to as ‘vodka nirvana’, or ‘embodying the draught’.
The brain (untreated) is energised until it reaches its boiling point and begins to vaporize. Once all of the thought in the brain has vaporized, the vapour is led into the cerebral cortex whereupon the cooling thought reverts to the thinking form in a clear state. It can then be poured directly from the brain.
Because the distillation process can never ensure a complete separation between thought and other materials, the process is often repeated one or more times with the treated thought. Many ‘draughts’ (the penultimate of which is sometimes referred to as ‘art’) have been vaporized and distilled (re-draughted) many times over.
Only at the point of the last refinement will one notice that there is no ‘draught’ as such any longer, only pure essence, pure spirit. This we refer to as ‘vodka nirvana’, or ‘embodying the draught’.
and a few short poems...
100% PROOF
It's a form of spiritual practice
the distillation of the bodymind
cycling from the centre of the city,
up and out...
into...
the hills,
dripping, distilling, exuding,
removing the heads and tails,
en-spacing and aereating self
under your own steam, and, at your own pace,
creating the infinitely distilled spirit.
MY SWEAT
my sweat
dripping from the bodymind
dripping from the world
triple-distilled Being
44 years old.
MY DISTILLERY
Up there,
far beyond the chaotic city
lies my distillery
and a few barrels
of a 35 year old single malt
Absolute Living in the Braes above Kilpatrick
Human beings are divided into the mature and the immature,into those who have a responsible knowledge of the Absolute and try to conform to it and those who do not. They are divided into those who accept the demands of practice and those who do not, and what finally counts is whether they try to realize themselves in a humanity that relies on immanent transcendence to lift humanness to a higher level, and so fulfill their true human destiny.
Karlfried Graf Durckheim, Absolute Living
And the emptiness turns its face and whispers, 'I am not empty, I am open.'
Tomas Transtromer, Vermeer
In other words, there are those who in-source, and those who outsource. The latter buy into convention, and the socio-economic contract without really giving it another thought. They unthinkingly go through life on pre-fabricated sub-routines, embedded in this dialectic of toil and recovery, destruction-construction, compression-decompression... It's a cycle that is rarely life-enhancing, and more life-depleting. They work in order to consume. They consume, presumably, not because they need to, but because they've been duped into doing so. It is as the situationist Raoul Vaneigm once said, a hellish cycle. But it needn't be like that.
There are plenty of opportunities to get in touch with the Absolute around Glasgow, in those hills, in those vast empty spaces and 'primordial breaks', in the coast, around the islands, on those empty single-track back-roads.... in the mind that is open to it all.
Glasgow is thus a blessed place, and not just blessed by Serf's bull, but blessed by it's gently undulating topography, by its invigorating and refreshing climate, by its peculiar and idiosyncratic people, and by its wild-life, not so wild as it once was but wild enough to re-mind us who we are. All these places and spaces point the way to an initiation and the initiatory, the primal and the primordial.
As Karlfried Graf Durckheim states in his book Absolute Living: To follow the Way of initiation is to follow a way of practice, a way that means exercise - tirelessly working on the self.
In a previous chapter, Durckheim had written:
'Today (the book was published in 1968), it is generally recognized that the West is overactive, and needs to grasp what doing nothing really means. It must learn to appreciate and accept those meditative practices that are, as initiation exercises, an essential part of traditional life-guidance in the East'.
This 'cycling' is an initiatory practice. It is, as the word's etymology suggests, an opening into the mystery of Life and of Living. Heidegger, who was not a million miles away from Durckheim, called this 'initiation' Gelassenheit or 'releasement', but both indicated the same thing. A move away from certainty and scientism, and a move towards the great mystery and openness to the earth at large as a living breathing entity in which we find our plant-like selves caught up.
The three aspects that Durckheim identifies as essential to perceiving Being are:
1. Developing the sensitivity needed for contact with Being.
2. Gaining insight into the conditions on which the experience of Being depends.
3. Practicing to eliminate everything that separates us from Being and develop everything that connects us with it.
The cycling into the hills, into these spaces, is that 'training' and 'practice', is the development of these three aspects, in not just dispelling the nonsense that you have been infected with (consider the workaday world as some form of Trojan horse) but in inoculating the self with the mind's eye that has been glazed over by too much non-essential toil and distraction.
The hills themselves have the added bonus of being Earth. And Earth is this mysterious entity (how could you call it anything else?) in which/out of which we grow, flow, and if we're on the right path, flourish and flower. The sea, the coast, the hills, the land (outwith the heavy-handedness of man's impact) all have this mysterious quality in abundance, and our inability to perceive it - this enchantment and this magic! - is all a result of our not paying attention to the above aspects.
Man could do a lot worse than cycling into the hills under his own steam, and when he gets there, perching upon a rock, and contemplating nothing in general. But of course, as Durckheim points out, the West has a rather negative connotation of this 'doing nothing'. Yet, the man-world can only be saved, can only be returned to the human world, through a conscientious process of 'doing nothing' and 'contemplating nothing'.
We are after all not 'things'.
Glasgow is thus a blessed place, and not just blessed by Serf's bull, but blessed by it's gently undulating topography, by its invigorating and refreshing climate, by its peculiar and idiosyncratic people, and by its wild-life, not so wild as it once was but wild enough to re-mind us who we are. All these places and spaces point the way to an initiation and the initiatory, the primal and the primordial.
As Karlfried Graf Durckheim states in his book Absolute Living: To follow the Way of initiation is to follow a way of practice, a way that means exercise - tirelessly working on the self.
...initiatory work is not something we do but something that we allow to happen. it means listening, hearing, obeying, surrendering to a process, and admitting a new reality that touches us in ourselves and in everything around us, calling on us to change in a very special way, and impelling us to do so.
In a previous chapter, Durckheim had written:
'Today (the book was published in 1968), it is generally recognized that the West is overactive, and needs to grasp what doing nothing really means. It must learn to appreciate and accept those meditative practices that are, as initiation exercises, an essential part of traditional life-guidance in the East'.
This 'cycling' is an initiatory practice. It is, as the word's etymology suggests, an opening into the mystery of Life and of Living. Heidegger, who was not a million miles away from Durckheim, called this 'initiation' Gelassenheit or 'releasement', but both indicated the same thing. A move away from certainty and scientism, and a move towards the great mystery and openness to the earth at large as a living breathing entity in which we find our plant-like selves caught up.
The three aspects that Durckheim identifies as essential to perceiving Being are:
1. Developing the sensitivity needed for contact with Being.
2. Gaining insight into the conditions on which the experience of Being depends.
3. Practicing to eliminate everything that separates us from Being and develop everything that connects us with it.
The cycling into the hills, into these spaces, is that 'training' and 'practice', is the development of these three aspects, in not just dispelling the nonsense that you have been infected with (consider the workaday world as some form of Trojan horse) but in inoculating the self with the mind's eye that has been glazed over by too much non-essential toil and distraction.
The hills themselves have the added bonus of being Earth. And Earth is this mysterious entity (how could you call it anything else?) in which/out of which we grow, flow, and if we're on the right path, flourish and flower. The sea, the coast, the hills, the land (outwith the heavy-handedness of man's impact) all have this mysterious quality in abundance, and our inability to perceive it - this enchantment and this magic! - is all a result of our not paying attention to the above aspects.
Man could do a lot worse than cycling into the hills under his own steam, and when he gets there, perching upon a rock, and contemplating nothing in general. But of course, as Durckheim points out, the West has a rather negative connotation of this 'doing nothing'. Yet, the man-world can only be saved, can only be returned to the human world, through a conscientious process of 'doing nothing' and 'contemplating nothing'.
We are after all not 'things'.
Kilpatrick to Bowling via the Abyss
Kilpatrick to Bowling is normally a sedate affair along the canal towpath for about 2km. However, you can go another way...
The up and over way.... via the abyss.
Far less sedate (sedation will get you nowhere) and far more edifying...
This section of the Loch Humphrey path (you'll know it when you get to it) is fondly known by the locals as 'The Bastard'. I have never ever been able to cycle its full length in a oner, although I have seen others do it with relative ease. Personally, I blame it on the bike, and my penchant for smoking the odd hubbly bubbly, but man, I reckon even the Tour de France's top polka-dot would have a hard time on this little stretch! At least when you're gasping for breath, and wondering if your heart's about to give out, you can take in those breath-taking (agghh!) views across the valley.
From the eastern edge of Loch Humphrey, the peaceful sound of Nature is palpable. In the far distance, you can just see the Campsie Fells.
and there's an even more interesting article here on the shenanigans of the quarry operator William Thompson and Son, here:
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/local-news/dumbarton-quarry-operator-avoids-huge-7256824#MkSLuV0MyZtDdGDe.97
Another airy station, this time Bowling, almost beach-like, with the river widening out and its shipwrecked little harbour.
The up and over way.... via the abyss.
Far less sedate (sedation will get you nowhere) and far more edifying...
Kilpatrick train station is ideally placed for the Loch Humphrey path which takes us up into the Kilpatrick Hills. The path is steep in places, so be prepared to make like Sisyphus, and get off and push. This path after all was originally a drove road, designed for beasts with four not two legs.
The two blue dotted lines branching off are the Doughnot hill to the north (a worthy half hour detour), or the Crags path (which, if you are with bike, is very awkward and at certain points more than a little hair-raising). The orange circle at the bottom is the Sheephill Quarry.
The two blue dotted lines branching off are the Doughnot hill to the north (a worthy half hour detour), or the Crags path (which, if you are with bike, is very awkward and at certain points more than a little hair-raising). The orange circle at the bottom is the Sheephill Quarry.
This section of the Loch Humphrey path (you'll know it when you get to it) is fondly known by the locals as 'The Bastard'. I have never ever been able to cycle its full length in a oner, although I have seen others do it with relative ease. Personally, I blame it on the bike, and my penchant for smoking the odd hubbly bubbly, but man, I reckon even the Tour de France's top polka-dot would have a hard time on this little stretch! At least when you're gasping for breath, and wondering if your heart's about to give out, you can take in those breath-taking (agghh!) views across the valley.
From the eastern edge of Loch Humphrey, the peaceful sound of Nature is palpable. In the far distance, you can just see the Campsie Fells.
Recently, there have been changes around Riggangower Farm and not for the better. The landfill site has been re-started and fences have been put in place on paths that walkers and cyclists previously took. Naturally, an alternate right of way has to be instituted, and it has, although at points fenced in on both sides, the way is so narrow, and in summer so hemmed in by stinging nettles, that it is a virtual gauntlet of distress. Personally, I opt for cycling down through the field, but that requires a keen eye and a lot of hope. You're probably better of walking with the bike through then field when the path gets too boggy or nettled out. You can see that sentiments towards the farmer here are not great, and I have to say that, ten years ago, when passing through here with my friend on bicycles, the farmer threatened to shoot my friend with his shotgun (for passing through his farm - at that point there was no alternate route available). He's a nasty old farmer he is, and I'm glad others have noticed this too.
The abyss in question is the quarry at Sheephill (there's another one just 2km west at Dumbuck). It's the first time I've climbed up to peer into it, but what a peer! Indeed, the destruction of this hill has important ramifications since it was the site of a very significant hill fort. There's a very interesting article by the archeologist Euan Mackie of the history of the hill, here:
https://heritageaction.wordpress.com/2015/04/17/a-scottish-hillfort-and-adjacent-rock-carving-part-14/
https://heritageaction.wordpress.com/2015/04/17/a-scottish-hillfort-and-adjacent-rock-carving-part-14/
and there's an even more interesting article here on the shenanigans of the quarry operator William Thompson and Son, here:
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/local-news/dumbarton-quarry-operator-avoids-huge-7256824#MkSLuV0MyZtDdGDe.97
Always porous, always fluid..... the meditative cyclist's bodymind.
Supplies
I remember sitting in the Kilaptrick Braes enjoying a coffee when a couple of young cyclists approached. One of them looked at me, saw the map, the binoculars, the notebook, the flask of steaming hot lava java, and turned to his mate and said: 'He's got the right idea; he's got supplies!'
It's all about the supplies really. Never leave home without them. If you do, then you are just as mad as this silly economic model the western world labours under. That is, you never stop to breathe in the views, to examine where you are, to simply take note of those soft and quiet words that might pass through this now crystalline body-mind. I often see road cyclists with no supplies whatsoever, and I wonder what they do it for. Would they not be better on a treadmill in a gym? After all, they appear, at that speed, and with that downward trajectory of the head, to be completely oblivious of their surroundings other than the road itself. This is a complete anathema to my sort of cycling. My cycling is a pilgrimage (as well as a form of conscientious objection to the madness of the workaday world), and all pilgrims need some supplies, even if it's only a vade mecum, a little pick-me-up, and a chunk of stale bread.
What supplies I hear you ask, then?
Well, a map for one. Not an iphone with GPS capabilities, but a hard copy map, made of paper, preferably an OS map (I prefer the Landranger series over the more detailed Explorer series). If you don't want to fork out 7 quid for one (which, I agree, is about 5 quid too much) you can easily get all the maps you want from Glasgow's extensive library network, or check the route online and mark it in your notebook (not iphone) before you set off.
Secondly, and perhaps more important than a map - a flask of coffee - and some hot lava java to enjoy as a reward when you get up to the top of that climb. Not only is it a worthy reward for all that hard work, but it sure does reinvigorate. There's nothing quite like it really, having coffee on top of a deserted hill with no-one but the birds for company.
Then, I like to take my binoculars (I have a light-weight pair with a great macro facility that allows me to focus on insects that are two feet away, as well as birds that are 200 metres away).Getting to know your 'home' involves being able to identify various creatures that share it with you, whether plants or animals, or indeed rocks. I find a small pair of binoculars an invaluable resource in doing this.
Of course, there are the essentials like a spare tube and patches, and a bicycle pump. These are always in my bag, with a small packet of bandages, just in case.
Of course, there are the essentials like a spare tube and patches, and a bicycle pump. These are always in my bag, with a small packet of bandages, just in case.
Liquids. It might seem obvious, but I've seen people climb hills with nothing before, only to return home with a headache because they're dehydrated. Of course, it depends on the weather, but normally, I will always take a small bottle of water (500ml) with me, and a half bottle of lucozade sport (250ml), as well as my flask of coffee. This will do you until you get home where you can, if need be, rehydrate even more.
I also tend to pack a small towel, a light and easily folded rain jacket, a spare t-shirt (in the warmer months), my notebook and pen, and my small digital camera. Like this, I can go anywhere and document it, with view to writing it up when I get home. I find that the processing of these trips whether through a blog or through various other projects I involve myself in, is an essential part to my overall understanding. The processing helps to clarify certain elements of the journey, and aerate them. Indeed, the processing is part of the overall process. The one informs the other. That is, cycling into the hills makes me creative, and being creative makes me cycle into the hills. It is a reciprocally engendering process which is always fulfilling in the healthiest possible way.
But it wouldn't be half that without my supplies...
Cardross to Govan via Carman Hill Fort, Dumbarton and the Yoker-Renfrew Ferry
This morning, the weather again informs my choice of where to go. The sun is out and it feels like a Cardrossian kind of day. I jump the Helensburgh express at 11.08am from Partick. 26 minutes later I'm breathing in seaweed smells from the platform at Cradross, another great train station location, almost on the beach itself. And it does feel like a beach as opposed to a bedraggled piece of coastline. The Clyde is more sea here than river, and you feel it. At any rate, it's an oxygenating start to any cycle, as is the Carman High Road which is just a couple of minutes round the corner. Follow the blue line, and it'll take you up the single track road where you can veer off to a couple of interesting spots along the way, the first being Kilmahew House (formerly St. Peter's Seminary), and the next being Carman Muir Hillfort.
Images of the dilapidated seminary can be seen here:
http://cyclingmeditations.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/meditation-3-dumbarton-circular-via.html
The other orange circle on the map just to the east of Cardross station is the wonderful Geilston Gardens (maintained by the National Trust) where you can get up close and personal with some giant Sequoia trees, some of the tallest trees in Scotland.
From the shore at Cardross looking across to Port Glasgow and Greenock.
This is us on the right, the Carman High Road... going up!
Passing Cardross Golf Course...
You could be forgiven for thinking you were somewhere in the heart of Europe, with this sun-dappled little glen and the sounds of nature all around.
The entrance up to the hillfort which you can see just to the upper right. It's only a 15 minute climb from here by bike and foot.
Looking east-ish over Alexandria at al. into the Vale of Leven.
From the hillfort itself looking west... All my cycling-hillwalking could be summarised simply as trying to find a quiet place to have coffee and gather my thoughts;) Caffeine and oxygen I have discovered, mixed in with a few endorphins and vast draughts of space, can have a real profound (and beneficial) effect on the mind.
The bactrian Dumbarton Rock from Dumbarton.
The almost Mediterranean Bowling harbour with the blessed Kilpatrick braes in the background.
The route back to Glasgow follows the Sustrans path through Dumbarton, Bowling, Clydebank etc..
Because I live in Govan however I sometimes take the wee Yoker-Renfrew ferry (actually a raft now) and continue along the boardwalk at Braehead and along the long and pretty quiet Govan Road. I find the river crossing poetic, and the boardwalk at Braehead offers views across to the former shipyards at Scotstoun. If this isn't thought-provoking enough, you have just around the corner when we rejoin the road, the dump, the new billion dollar hospital, and the sewage works.... before we pass through Govan village which has its own curiosities, not least the old church and its ancient hog-back Viking grave stones....
Anyway, it's such an easy route, but so full of interest.... a great way to spend any afternoon.
Barrhead to Paisley Canal via Walls Hill Fort
A great little route - not very long but a great series of short climbs before we reach the path by Walls Hill Fort and Broadfield Hill. Plenty of spots to stop once we're up on the plateau to inhale the space. I should say, though the most part of this route is on paved roads, that this is an off-road bike kinda route. No road bikes unless you're prepared to sling it on your back for a couple of km between Hartfield and Hallhill. Also, if you want to get up to Walls Hill and Broadfield Hill the link here will give you that option:
The route starts at Barrhead station (centre right, blue circle) and up the Gateside Road. Keep following it up up up and when you get to Mossneuk take the blue line backroad, which by now, if it hadn't been already, is utterly devoid of any human presence at all. Through some wonderful corridors of big old beech trees we skip over the fence at Hartfield and head down the tractor path to Walls Hill. Just keep to the faint path to the right of the hill and it'll take us pretty easily onto a paved road. Here, I cut over another fence and onto an old dilapidated path down to Hallhill. A worthy detour. Not a soul to be seen. From there, it's straightforward enough to get back on to the sustrans path at Elderslie (passing the Wallace monument along the way) and back to Paisley Canal train station, which, if our timing is anywhere near as good as our spacing, the wee shooglie will be waiting just for me and Pegasus!
All in all, a beautiful wee route with more than just a touch of the primal and primordial. And all those short climbs to start with really open you up, so that by the time you're up on the plateau, strange things start to happen!
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