The Three Mothers: Clevans, Barnbeth, Law

Up here, behind Bridge of Weir, the peace and serenity is exquisite. These three perches (or pulpits, or podia) are the finest there is for offering a view over the strath from the west. Normally, I cycle from Paisley Canal (sustrans path all the way to BOW) and then cut off  at BOW. Here, there are a few routes up and over and down to Kilbarchan (or Howwood) on the other side, whereby I rejoin the tangential sustrans path and head back to Paisley Canal. It's a circuit, all told, of about 90-120mins, or longer if you decide to stop and breathe it all in. And you should stop. This is what shamanic cycling is all about: embracing the pauses in the midst of the flow, and breathing it all in. Below are a couple of videos and a few images taken from hereabouts.

'Silentium from Clevans'

'Breathing it all in at Barnbeth' 

'The Sound of Law'

From the top of Clevans Road looking back towards the city.

























Further along Clevans on the golf course.

Gazing from Barnbeth

 

Barnbeth Estate Doocot

From Law

The bench of serenity (with shamanic tramp) at Law

Cycling Nirvana

The truth of Buddhism is realized only through practice; it is attained through the body. The way we use our muscles must be in accordance with zazen. Practicing zazen, we train our attitude towards life in each and every acitivity. This is practice. Within it we actualize true peace of mind.
 
Homeless Kodo
 

I've always harboured the belief that cycling through the shires in and around Glasgow is a form of zazen and spiritual awakening. I mean, think about it, as a cyclist you're seated on 'a little black cushion' on top of a frame and a couple of wheels. Is this not what the monk does when he meditates: sits on a cushion on top of a frame-work (practice) and a couple of wheels (mind, mandala).
As a method of emptying, cycling is a wonderfully kenotic enterprise. One might say that it then encompasses all religions insofar as it empties you of yourself, not just Buddhism. All religion is practice and 'emptying'. The kenotic emerges out of the kinetic. 

One might feel this more acutely when freewheeling on a bicycle not especially downhill but on a flat with the wind behind you. This is pure cycling nirvana (nir-vana as the 'negation of the wind') - and travelling without actually moving, the wind effectively extinguished,  whilst seated on a little black cushion, (back straight, body still, mind breathing) on a saddle. This is practice. It is attained through the body. By cycling (preferably into those quiet pastoral hills), we train our attitude toward life in each and every activity. Within it we actualize true peace of mind.

 

Root of the Year

Each year (in a naturally-abiding world) the animal grows a new tap-root into the earth. This taproot is the root that goes way down, that doesn't just suck up earth nutrition (suction being essential to the great cosmic flow) but earth-knowledge, earth-knowing, earth-con-science. Everyone should have strong sturdy taproots that deliver this knowing through the feet, into the bodymind system. This earth delivery system however, in our push for progress and technology (that works against Nature), has been compromised severely. No longer do we tap into the earth to know but pile-drive into it to build.

In order for our taproots to grow and really in-form (as Nature intended) we need to locomote. We need to galvanize the growing of this taproot. Without this 'self-movement through place' it will not grow but wither. A body that is carried and 'transferred unnaturally' does not develop roots but 'ruts'. These ruts stultify Being and prevent earth-knowledge from entering. Earth-knowledge is replaced by machine-knowledge, roots are replaced by ruts, and soon the root of the year, if we're not vigilant enough, becomes rut of the year.

At any rate, the root is the route, and this is one great route-root! I have already documented it a couple of times here and there, but I feel another one is necessary. It's that good!

The route is a circuit from Paisley Canal station via Bridge of Weir (via the Sustrans cycle path), Auchensale, and Kilbarchan. It takes roughly 90 minutes to two hours cycling at a leisurely pace. There are plenty of tangential roots that veer off this main taproot (up the Clevans Road via Barnbeth, or through Lawmarnock onto Howwood etc.) that will extend your excursion here and there and proffer some of the pastoral beauty that is hidden up here on this airy plateau between Bridge of Weir and Howwood and Kilbarchan.

Take the orange lasso from Paisley Canal station. The dotted line is the route via Lawmarnock, the other one via Barbeth and Auchensale.

Dumbreck Station (my starting point).

Ranfurly Falls. This is then ravine and water beside Ranfurly Green in Bridge of Weir. You can walk the bike up here through the woods and green up onto the Clevans Road.

From the top of the Clevans Road looking over to Lochend Farm.

The Clevans Road towards Barnbeth has to be one of the most idyllic roads I have ever cycled (and also one of the most car-free). I mean just look at it!

Barnbeth Estate and house in distance, and golf course. Note the peak of Hill of Stake on left-centre horizon.

Barnbeth House

Some of Barnbeth House's permanent residents (with Campsie Fells in background). The views from here east over Glasgow and beyond are impeccable.

The view from Barnbeth, looking east.

The nameless loch beside Barnbeth.

Passing through Auchensale Farm. Again, the views from here are vast!! If you can just hold your nose long enough....

The plateau of desolation. Cycling through this area is as peaceful as it gets. Something of a little Switzerland for its endless rolling hills.

Approaching East Barneigh
























This is the road to Burntshields and further on to Howwood. Wonderfully helter-skelterry and devoid of anyone except the wee red van of the postie.

From Law. All downhill from here. Just watch the road, it can get rather pot-holey near the left side, and it's dark further down with tree overhang.

Passing through Kilbarchan.

From atop Saucelhill just behind the train station of Paisley Canal.

From Saucelhill looking north-north-east.

The Ambient Array: Around the Strath in a Dozen (or so) Perches

I guess for the past 15 years or so (give or take a few years living in Warsaw and another couple in Saudi Arabia and Kazakhstan), I have been circumnavigating the strath mostly by bicycle and train. It's a wonderful thing to do, cycling and training, emphatically outdoors in wide-open spaces devoid of people but full of Nature. People have lost their way, that much is sure, they ignore Nature and fill their selves full of nonsense. These escapades of mine are an attempt to reconnect with the Way, pare 'identity' down to its bare essentials, and rediscover my name as no-name (and the omni-nymous). This is the trick at the end of the day: to absolve yourself of itself; to clear away this destructive human concoction that now sees our planet on the brink of extinction due to our ignoring Nature and our paving over own body's organic technology (replacing and displacing it with another synthetic one which destroys the earth and our own evolutive capacity).

The perch is the perfect place from which to consider these things. Perfect for it allows you your own locomotive force in order to get there (there are no train stations at the tops of hills, even fewer roads going up the best of them), and to a certain extent (if you like to leave the beaten path like I do) your own locating powers. This locability is essential to any animated creature, and it is this as opposed to our current eco-dislocation, that renders the percher whole again and, dare I say it, wise. 

Wise because the percher does not abstract his animal self. He works as in locomoting, foraging, uncovering. He re-fuses his self with the cosmos and as such refuses to kowtow to 'man' and his unnatural demands. This refusing leads to the annihilation of his hitherto eco-existential confusion (that has been taught by a dualistic and fragmented way of perceiving the world) and thus leads to oneness as an alignment with Nature and ultimately your own greater Self.

The following dozen perches are the twelve apostles. They circumnavigate the strath at around 2-300m with each offering not just a different perspective of the valley, but together offering the panoptic and the whole. These perches (or 'sit spots' in the indigenous tongues) are the disciples that discipline, that re-move the sedentarized and car-borne human into a more natural matrix of being.  They gaze over the strath like guardians and allies, and if we go to them, and listen carefully, and keep that mind open, we might learn what they have to say...

 

 

 

Sailing Thru Auchensale

Auchensale being a farmstead up on the desolate plateau between Bridge of Weir and Kilbarchan/Howwood. As I sailed through I saw a wonderful panorama of the strath....

And it's best to sail through (without stopping) for the stench is quite something, and I'm not overly fond of the sounds of cattle being slaughtered.

Train Stations to Nowhere

Within the Glasgow strath, there are numerous train stations. Glasgow, after all, has the second largest rail network outside London. The train stations I want to highlight here are those at the foots of hills. Glasgow, after all, is a strath.

So here, we have three on the north side of the Clyde and three on the south but there are plenty more. I want to highlight these because for those of us living in the city, it might be a little easier to train it through the city to its edge before getting on the bicycle and hiking it into the hills. For me, living in Cessnock, the train provides me with a wonderful catapult aspect that fires me and my metal hoss just that little bit further out. 

At any rate, the train stations to nowhere...

First, there is Barrhead station which as soon as you exit you see the upwardly sloping Gateside Road. This is all you need to know to get into the Ferenese Hills, the Lochliboside Hills and the Gleniffer Braes. The Gateside Road (contrary to the Calside-Stanely-Gleniffer-Seargantlaw Roads up from Paisley Canal station) is wonderfully quiet and bucolic.

Second, there is Neilston station, the oldest railway line in Glasgow, which deposits you at the foot of Neilston Pad, Duncarnock Mount and the gently rolling hills to the south of Glasgow.

Third, there is Newton station, which is a wonderful access point for Dechmont Hill above Cambuslang, the Cathkin Brase and the quiet pastoral roads between East Kilbride and Glasgow.

Fourth, there is Thorntonhall station on the East Kilbride line, a wonderfully countryside station that is literally in full country (although property developers are slowly putting the kaibosh on this). Here, we have beautiful access to Eaglesham  and the hills above it and Newton Mearns.

Fifth, on the north side of the river, there is Croy station which gives us Croy and Barr Hill right next to it and superb views from both. A little further on the bike from Croy, we can cycle down to Kilsyth and up the Tak Ma Doon road into the Campsies.

Sixth, Milngavie station gives us access to Mugdock Country Park and its hills, and beyond to the Campsie Fells.

Seventh, there is Kilpatrick station right at the foot of the Kilpatrick Braes. 

Only a moron would take a car.

Surfing the Strath

Surfing's the source. Bodhi

Cycling is a form of surfing. My bicycle is my surfboard. In both activities, one must peddle or paddle to attain the freewheel, the soar, and the surf. Where surfers align their selves with the sea, cyclers align their selves with the land. Both are elemental activities (and not just 'outdoor'), the wind and the flow being essential attributes.

Where surfers profess a longing to be one with the ocean, cyclers profess that longing in their union with the land, the land being none other than an ocean of its own at a different spatio-temporal setting. 

Thus, the strath of Clyde where Glasgow and I rest is, to those who can see, whether it be the shamanic cycler or the seafaring surfer, a great ocean of swells (hills) and breaking waves (braes)... to be pedalled and paddled, surfed, cycled, and loved.

Paisley Canal Circuit via Bridge of Weir and Lawmarnock

What a great little circuit, all car-free on the Sustrans 75 path from Paisley Canal train station with the exception of a small piece of road between Bridge of Weir and Kilbarchan. In fact, this piece of road is so quiet that it's one of my favourites around the greater Glasgow strath, not least because some thoughtful souls have put three benches (of serenity) alongside it at regular intervals. There is also a choice of two routes when you leave the path at BOW: the shorter route up to Auchensale, and the slightly longer route up to Clevans and Barnbeth. I almost always stop at the third bench just beside Law and marvel at the vista looking east over the strath. Moreover, this little interlude between BOW and KB is one of the few places in the greater Glasgow valley where you cannot hear the sound and the distant hum of cars. For this reason alone it is a blessed circuit. Indeed, this year alone, I have cycled it over a dozen times making it the most cycled of my circuits so far this year. It's that good. And today, the Sustran oldies were out with their wheelbarrows and brushes (no leafblowers here!) clearing autumn off the path.

The orange circle (lassoo) in centre of photo, starting on right at Paisley Canal train station.

There is also the opportunity to coffee or lunch en route at BOW or Kilbarchan where there are more than a few delightful little eateries and pubs. Right at the beginning of the route in fact, just out of Paisley Canal, there is Canal Station bar/bistro, which I pop into on the way back for a water bottle refill. I have yet to eat or drink there but it looks lovely inside and the staff are always very friendly to me.