Into the Wilderness

Glasgow is fortunate in many respects in being a valley. This means of course that there are hills on all sides, hills that due to their awkward misshapen nature are difficult to build on. And where there is an absence of buildings there is generally a profusion of Nature and of wilderness. Take this morning for example, jumping with bike onto the 11.14 to Milngavie from Partick. Arriving at Milngavie at 11.30 I head up to Mugdock village a couple of miles away (and, more importantly, a couple of hundred metres up). It's a great start that opens up the valves so by the time you're up in Mugdock you might as well be flying for that ecstatic release that hill-cycing enables. And we are flying because it's all downhill along the Old Mugdock Road down to Strathblane. Here, we avoid the main road and take the path that leads round behind the road beside the Blane Water. To the left we have the precipitous Cuilt Brae and its woods and to the right we have the great mesa of the Campsie Fells and the Strathblane Hills. We are within a valley within a valley. In short, we are in the wilderness if you can excuse the odd visual of Blanefield's housing. Exiting onto the Blanefield Road, we rise with the land up again towards Carbeth where we join the WHW and head towards Mugdock Wood. Down and through the wood we are ejected onto the road we started on. Another five minutes and we're back at the train station. I haven't rushed or hurried at all during my cycle, quite the opposite, I got off two or three times to walk. I feel as if I have been injected with a serum that immunizes me against the horseshit down there in the city. I almost float as I get onto the train. The journey took 70 minutes, the train both ways half an hour. So, there you have it, in the space of a shit film, a trip into the wilderness and back. There ain't many major cities that can boast such sanctifying and savage proximity.

 

 

 

The red dotted path near coffee stain at top of map is the one to take instead of the main roadto Blanefield. When you come down the Old Mugdock Road you will see the Co-op at the bottom. Turn left (not right) at the junction and this will take you onto the red dotted path which will deposit you onto the Blanefield Road without so much as a car in sight.