Hard to Kill Hills #4: Nolly Brig to Ruchill Flagpole

The other day as I was taking a cycle along the canal from Spiers Wharf to Murano I nipped off at the Nolly Brigg and up to Ruchill flagpole. No sooner had I done this than I realized this was a pretty steep hill. In fact, I got off the bike and walked it up to the park entrance where I remounted and cycled up to the flag. It's a real tester to be sure (my excuse was that I wasn't in a low enough gear to start off with) and if you make it to the top without getting off you can claim your invincibility. No holding onto the bannisters as you go either...

The Cruising Bicycle Overtake

This is a rare cycling manouevre, not so much man-oeuvre as simply oeuvre and masterpiece. I  am of course speaking  of the cruising bicycle overtake which involves the masterful act of overtaking a car whilst cruising (and not pedalling). This means that a steep(ish) hill and perhaps a tailwind is not too far away, which means in a hilly windy valley like Glasgow, the cruising bicycle overtake is always a faint possibility. The last time I performed the manoeuvre was in Kilbarchan down its main street from the north. There is even a speedometer in the form of a speed camera that tells you near the top how fast you are going. I regularly hit about 22-3mph by the time I pass the camera which means further down (and on this particular day with wind behind) I must've been nearing 30mph at cruise speed. This is where you will find the overtake, just beside the wee cottage celebrating Kilbarchan's textile past, as there is an another road on the left as you're descending that joins the main road here. Coming down, cars have difficulty seeing you as there is a bend in the main road, so on this particular day, a wee  wifie pulled out as I approached from behind. As she was changing gears moving into second or third and at about 15-20mph I knew I was going fast enough to simply pull out and overtake. And so this is what I did. And boy, what a move it is! Cruising past an overweight driver in their dinky little pollutant not even looking at them. You can almost hear them shouting at their car: Go faster, change bloody gears, there's a bicycle overtaking me! It is a supreme feeling but not without risk, so it requires skill and nerve, and is not for the faint-hearted. The other hill that I have performed this oeuvre on is Kirkhill above Cambuslang coming down from Kirkhill Golf Course (where you can practise overtaking golf buggies!). I have regularly maddened young upstarts in their souped up motors by cruising past them often because they have to stop up ahead at the traffic lights queue. It's amazing really to see the frustration in their eyes and to hear it through their false bodies of the car's revving engine and screeching brakes. This is a wild cyclist's wet dream, and coming down from Kirkhill all the way down to the river Clyde path (a distance of some two miles), overtaking and irking these little disembodied polluters, has to be the best there is. But be warned, car drivers in this part of the world generally go apeshit when they are overtaken by a humble cyclist especially if like me you give them a little 'wave' as you  pass. Just make sure you know your territory and all the little ramps onto pavements and exits that cars just cannot take. A bicycle the wild cyclist knows can always out-manoeuvre a car simply by stopping and turning around, but when you do it the car's way and perform a bona fide overtake (with wave) this is when you know you have shaken off your farm animal status and become truly wild.

 

 

The Immortal 8: Barr Hill

Three hours is all it took, not that I was rushing or watching the clock (since I don't have one), door to door via the immortal Barr Hill in between Twechar and Croy. I started off at Milngavie train station and headed up through Dougalston, Baldernock and Torrance, to the canal towpath that takes you (like a conveyor belt) all the way to Twechar just past Kirkintilloch some five miles away. Here, we branch off, head up the road for couple of hundred metres before turning up onto the path that leads to Barr Hill. After enjoying those expansive views over to the Campsies and the Kelvin valley we head down the other side to Croy and the waiting train (yes, it was waiting just for me;) and a twelve minute bullet through the bucolic back  to the newly renovated hauptbanhof of Queen Street. Another ten minutes by the river and I'm hame. It's 14:04 and I left my gaff at 11:00 on the dot. What's not amazing about that? The fact that I have entered another 'zone' of being - the bucolic and the pastoral - and been in contact with so much life via that canal and those country back roads. In those three hours I've cycled through woods, fords, passed countless streams and ponds, seen a million lifeforms that are not human-shaped or even human-like (fortunately), breathed in the silence and the space, nevermind that blissful solitude, and climbed a half dozen hills of varying sizes. And as if to seal the deal, the train is literally waiting for me at Croy station as I arrive. 

God Bless Glasgow!

 

 

I thought I had taken the wrong train there for a minute arriving as I did at the newly refreshed Queen Street station. No sure if I like it though given the fact that the square frontage seems to clash with the semi-circular facade that used to be there and whose top you can still see. What I do like is the fact that the roads are slowly being taken back by the people. 'People first, not pollution' would be the motto of my city, and no-one would have cars, they would all walk or cycle.

 

 

The Singing Bicycle

All bicycles sing. It's just difficult to hear it sometimes since you are invariably surrounded by noise. And also because there are several parameters that must be met before your bicycle will enchant and serenade you. The bicycle rarely sings when there are cars present, and like a true wild bird, it will rarely break out into song unless it knows its territory and where it is. This is why my bicycle sings all the time, because it knows the land and respects it, and it is always (even in the city) as far away from cars as possible. Yet, there is another stipulation for the bicycle's song, that is, that it will only appear after you have dismounted and are walking alongside the bicycle. This is why most cyclists never hear their bicycle's song: because they're always sat on its mouthpiece and 'forcing the bike to move'. But when the bicycle starts walking, and enters the great paradox that life is, its song is never far away. Try it and see. And don't wait for a steep hill either. You can get off your bike anytime and listen to its song.

Climbing the Walls

This is a continuation of the previous post which celebrated the 'hard to kill' hill at the foot of the Loch Humphrey path in Kilpatrick. I realised from the past two days outings that there are hard to kill hills all over my home range that is greater Glasgow. The last two days saw me climb them by bicycle but I guess you could walk and/or jog them as well. The first one is Hillside Grove just off Gateside road in Barrhead. From the bottom to its summit at Woodneuk Farm is about five hundred metres but what a hill! You can if you want continue all the way up on the farm path to above Ferenese golf course. It's a real opener-upper! And no cars!

The second starts from Milngavie train station and heads straight up to Dogmuck via four 'stages' although it is the last one as you get up to top that is the realhard to kill hill here. I have been known to get off the bike and walk up to the village post box before I remount for the superb downhill down the Old Mugdock Road  to Strathblane. Again, the beauty of this road is that there are never any nutters in cars roaring past you. Which isn't the case with some roads that  I used to cycle like the one up from Paisley Canal station to the Gleniffer Braes via Stanely Reservoir. Sure, it's a hard to kill hill and the braes and plateau at the top are well worth it but the amount of times I've been overtaken by supreme idiots in their dinky toy souped up cars is too much for me to recommend it as a safe route to ply your invincibility. Nevertheless, these are only a few of the many roads, paths, tracks, up the side of the strath that Glasgow sits in. When many are climbing the walls due to being locked down for Covid (or indeed out of work) maybe you should be exerting your divine right to exercise and breathe (and work naturally), and climb these walls instead.

Hazelwood Road just off Sustrans path at Bridge of Weir. Beautifully steep road, no cars, some lovely big houses (built by slave owners and tobacco merchants no less) and birdsong to accompany as you go.  And at the top you have the plateau of emptiness which you can dawdle through to Howwood or Kilbarchan on the  other side.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Top, Middle, or Bottom?

Here is Hillside Road (the middle one) and 800yds of stepth that cleanses the bodymind-earth system. Moreover, if you continue all the way to the top you'll cleanse that manky little soul of yours as well. Beautiful, no cars, no people, great views... and it's two minutes from Barrhead train station. What are you waiting for?

 

Feel The Train

Don't think. Feel.

Bruce Lee

There's spookiness afoot when you're constantly powering your self into the desert of the real. And this morning was no different. I left the house not looking at the time, (easy enough since there are no timepieces in my gaff and I don't have a dummy (smartphone)), intent on arriving at Cathcart train station (some twenty minutes away by bike) just in time to see the train pulling in. I never rushed, and never moved as if I was moving in order to reach somewhere at a certain time. In the great shamanic tradition, I was weightless and without the weight of time. And so it was today, that feeling before I left the house not so much of being on time (or rather, time being on me) but of being in time. And right enough, I arrived at the station a single minute before the train arrived. Just in time. I'm tempted to think that this is now 'instinct' for me, that I have a fair idea of the schedules of trains from past excursions, and how long it takes me to get to a given station from where I happen to be, and so without thinking about it the body just does it. The brain is bypassed by instinct - the ingrained imported memory of previous navigatings - so that now the  body thinks and remembers without you having to worry about it 'up top' so to speak. Some refer to this as the subconscious but it's really the 'Great Body' (that includes your body) sending you signals and communicating with you. 

This communication does not come from the 'future' (it just seems like the future since your greater Body is so capacious) but from your greater Body and Self (which contains all time-space) and thus from that which 'has already happened' but which just hasn't reached you (and your small ego-body) yet. The more capacious you become - the more you flow aboriginally - the more easily it is to 'hear this communication' since you are always in direct contact with the source. So, this morning, when I arrived at Cathcart just in time, you could say that I had simply been listening to my greater Self speak.
 

Halo

I've always maintained that cycling (shamanically) makes you sane (and thus saintly). It's all those hills and elevated regions, paradeshas and uncontaminated celestial zones. So when a halo spontaneously appeared above my head today whilst sitting on a grass verge at Paisley Canal train station I wasn't too surprised. The sun behind me had momentarily split the clouds and in so doing had caused the wheel of my upturned bike to cast a circle around my head. Not only this, but my head and new found halo also contained the 'Mind' part of the 'Mind the Gap' warning stencilled on the platform's edge. 

Coincidence you say? 

There are no coincidences I say.

 

 

Motorized

People are now 'motorised'. They cannot carry their selves anymore. They trundle about in a variety of ever-pretty prams polluting with impunity. And it's not just the air and the land they pollute with their fumes and their roads, but their very bodies. In subscribing to the 'motorised pram' man has lost his way and let the pram and the infantilizing tool guide him. But of course, infantilizing tools simply guide him into more lostness, until eventually, he is so far gone eco-existentially that the mere mention of the words 'ecological' or 'existential' sends him into a tizz, like the overweight woman this morning that I had to remonstrate with due to her driving her moped onto the sustrans cycle-walkway. 'No motorized vehicles on the path,' I shout loud enough to  penetrate her helmet (and her evidently thick skull)  as I pass her. 'It's electric,' she shouts back, as if cleaning the blade of the guillotine makes any difference to the ethics of execution. 'An electric motor?' I rhetorically holler. And I wonder if it's the body or the brain that suffers the most when you abandon your own locomotive force and pumping heart.

 

 

The Ben Hur Manoeuvre

 The Ben Hur Manoeuvre is a cycling term (that I just made up) for that peculiar breed of wild cyclist who wants to fight back against those car drivers who think they can use their cars as weapons with impunity. In order to perform the Ben Hur Manoeuvre effectively you need to get crafty and craft out what I call a stone-ring (a ring with a nobbly rock poking out of it) that you can place on your index finger of your right hand (or both hands if you're feeling particularly wild) when you're cycling. So that you can, as I did this morning when exiting Pollok Country Park (a country park that doesn't just have a road running through it but which appears to vitiate its country park status by giving priority to car drivers over walkers and cyclists), rub up against the oncoming Range Rover who refused to move out of my way (despite there being plenty of room for it to do so). And so, as it passed dangerously close to me, I simply extended my ringed knuckle and 'offered (this virgin white Range Rover) my hand in marraige'.

King of Cool: My New Favourite Downhill

Steve McQueen - cool?

You ain't seen cool until you've seen yourself on a bicycle heading downhill from the Gleniffer Braes through Glenburn and Carraigehill into the great city of Paisley.

 

This is my new favourite downhill. Try it, you won't be disappointed. Just keep your fingers on those brakes at that initial steep part, coming down from Glenburn Reservoir or Paisley Golf Course. But once you hit the housing estate, it's smooth soaring all the way with a brief dismount at the ultra steep Park Road until we get to the top and then we're back on again at arguably the coolest cornering you've ever seen as we exit Park Road (just after Brodie Park) and plough down Calside Road towards Paisley Canal train station.

Beautiful!

 

As soon as you see this, you can ease off the brakes and start freewheeling all the way more or less to Park Drive. Just watch out for stray kids and dodgy car drivers.

Taproute South: The Unsexy Circle - Cessnock Circular via the Kissing Tree

This route (root) is a belter, not just for its brevity (2hrs and 10mins. door to door at a leisurely pace), but for its capacity to enlighten and space out, given that you are entering one of the strath's great empty spaces with no people (and no dolls) and only the sound of Nature to inform you. The 'Kissing Tree' is the goal, the highest point (219m) on our expedition. There is a swing now from its branch, so you have the added bonus of swinging over the strath as a reward for your ascent. The way back down (to Paisley Canal train station) is great too with the residential roads that pass through Glenburn and Carraigehill and past Brodie Park being quiet and beautifully smooth (very few cars and no traffic lights) in its descent.

 

Jump the train at Paisley Canal (which, if your timing is as good as mine) will just be pulling in, and take it to Dumbreck where it's a two minute jaunt over the motorway and hame. The initial cycle to Pollokshaws West train station takes about fifteen mins. and takes me through the wonderful Pollok Country Park.

The train bits are marked in blue on map above with the cycling bits in purple (with walking part dotted).

The unsexy part comes from the  video I made at the top where I consider the etymology of the word 'sexy' (and 'second'). Watch and learn...