When you inhabit a hill-strewn hollow like Glasgow, filled with hills and surrounded by braes and fells, and you cycle as often as I do, it's hard not to think you are on some kind of self-propelled rollercoaster. I love hills, and I don't think I could live in another flat city (although Warsaw's forests often made up for its flatness). I love hills partly for this rollercoaster aspect but also for the dialogue aspect too: up communicating with down, gravity communicating with levity, and of course the views and all that space. There is a dimension here that flatness just doesn't have, the vertical dimension, the celestial dimension, the paradise dimension... the rollercoaster dimension. And often, I, like the rollercoaster, pause at the top and enjoy that summit, even if it is only 42m in height (like Saucelhill or Bathgo Hill), before plunging back down with gravity and wind as my companions. One might even say that my natural rollercoaster beats all other rollercoasters hands down for the fact that my rollercoaster goes all the way up to 700 odd metres, the highest point in the Glasgow strath at Tinto Hill. The whole city and the strath beyond is one giant topographical rollercoaster, and uniting with Glasgow's huge urban rail network (Bike + Train = Brain) makes it seem even moreso. What's more, this rollercoaster is queueless, open to all, relatively risk-free, and without charge. It invigorates, stimulates, galvanizes, and spaces out the bodymind, and most of all, brings that bodymind back down to earth if not verily in it.
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