ALL PHOTOS CLICK FULL SCREEN.
With the Strait of Hormuz blocked for the last few months and fuel prices for cars costing £70 for a full tank ( £20 for under a quarter of a tank) it was a no brainer for Alan and I to take buses to do a walk. Luckily, I had several walks up my sleeve and they were actually better suited using public transport as they started and ended in completely different locations. First up was Braehead, seen above and below, where I found out online that a 22 bus from stance 6 at Braehead Shopping Centre would take us to Silverburn Shopping Centre in Pollok. Around a 20 to 30 min journey via Penilee, Hillington and Crookston.
Barclay Curle Crane on the River Clyde. There's around a dozen of these heavy duty cantilever cranes scattered around the world still standing and this small river has four of them. This one....Finnieston. Clydebank's Titan and Greenock's Titan. Relics of the foremost shipbuilding hub on the planet from the 1800s right up to the 1960s so plenty of history and heritage here while you wait for a bus. ( An X8 express bus from Buchanan Bus Station will take you direct to Silverburn as well but we fancied a change by deliberately avoiding Glasgow City Centre altogether for something different.
The former Albion Motor Sheds on South Street. This location still deals with trucks and heavy haulage vehicles last time I looked. The bus soon arrived and we trundled off through the various housing estates mentioned to our destination. Our route was mostly new for Alan and we both enjoyed the journey. With my solo Edinburgh trips I was an old hand at bus travel across cities but I think Alan started to get into it as well when he realised a car trip down the coast, even Largs or Irvine would be £10 to £15 each in fuel costs. Half a tank.
Getting off the bus at Silverburn, and having pre-packed a lunch each, we followed the Brock Burn on a good tarmac path that starts from Silverburn, curves round Priesthill, Darnley and Arden following the burn all the way. The route looks like this most of the way. A green ribbon skirting the edge of these former council housing estates but in spring, summer and autumn they are mostly hidden and a rich canopy of leaves and wildflower verges brightens up the walk. Past Priesthill the path goes under a railway line via a large stone bridge, Brock Burn on left. Once through this open tunnel turn left up Kennishead Road past a playpark then follow another tarmac path between Darnley and Arden to Nitshill Road. Path seen above.
A glimpse of Darnley through the trees from the path. Having spent the first 27 years of my life in this area during the 1960s and 1970s I know it well. From the deck access estate that the Darnley once was ( see the last remaining deck access tower wall, now enclosed and with resident only gates and entry doors attached, above.) In the 1970s when the original estate was built you could walk from one end of this estate to the other at high level with connecting sky bridges leading to the various towers.
An old photo from 2013.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Hill,_Sheffield. A good link here giving you a taste of what it was like. Streets in the sky. An architectural adventure in concrete and brick that may never come again. Naïve mistake for families living in them though. Worth viewing the photo gallery in this link. Similar to the old Darnley. The new Darnley is much nicer... but less exciting. Same with Priesthill which now has a nature reserve where the water tower and some of the flat roofed tenements once stood.
The flat roofs and grim tenements of old Priesthill, built in the early 1950s with the dark massive concrete water on the summit of said hill looking across at us and Darnley like a devil's crown. Reputedly a priest was hanged here. Mordor and Mount Doom combined. Certainly was for us if we strayed too near it on our travels. A deadly rival gang. Maybe this is why these playpark animals look so apprehensive. They remember it too. It was rough.
Priesthill Street. Linnhead Drive I think. 1980s. Now a wildlife reserve. It was back then as well :o)
Nearby Arden has not changed that much since then. A few streets knocked down but still a tenement estate. I'd seen this gable end mural online and it is a cracker. It resonates so much with me as that's exactly how I discovered nature... and books. At that same age. An autumn scene painted by Rogue One and commissioned by Glen Oaks Housing Association on Kilbeg Terrace it's just a five minute detour from the path we took. I also vividly remember my first Spring at around a similar age. A toddler. Disused metal tramlines used to run past Arden then past the old Darnley Fire Station then up Parkhouse Road taking trams towards Barrhead and Paisley. I was placed by someone... parents or older sister, between the tramlines, probably in May, and was immediately surrounded by colourful dandelions, clover beds, and daisies growing/ covering the waste ground. At that age and height off the planet they might as well have been waist high daisies and head high sunflowers. I vividly remember it. That was it. I was completely hooked. Instant admiration. The natural world for life. A burning love affair far stronger than any human relationship... as none of them have lasted from cradle to grave. Books as well. Pollok had a great library so every children's book you can think of... all the classics....and a few more besides, like Lilith and Phantastes I devoured eagerly. Another lifelong passion. Alan seems to have it as well. Always new paper books in his house and that's one thing that is cheaper today. 10 pence to £1:50 out of charity shops when I was paying £5 to £10 40 years ago from city centre traditional book shops. (Lord of the Rings trilogy for a Xmas gift. Hope they appreciated it!)
We then cut along the edge of the Darnley on an elevated grassy ramp right beside Nitshill Road, past several flowering cherry trees, past the Sainsbury, to gain entry to the Dams to Darnley Country Park at the old stone bridge. Throughout the 1960s it was all fields, dairy cattle, and a few farms here. The countryside. All the housing developments now: The Darnley Estate, The Parkhouse Estate. Southpark Village, Jenny Lind Extension/Deaconsbank covers a lost area of fields and farms the size of five or six Pollok Country Parks. Think about that. I often wandered from my house via back inland tracks all the way from Parkhouse Road to Rouken Glen Park without hitting a single tarmac road or any traffic. Walking well inland from where Sainsbury's is now. And no M77 motorway either.
Although it is still an enjoyable walk today it is just a heavily overgrown tangle with a few man made walkways/ paths through it. In the 1960s and early 1970s, my teenage years, you could put a clock face down where I lived and go round every hour on it, walking a different varied route to the horizon. It was that good. A lot of prime farmland is out of bounds. Crops, barbed wire fences, deep ditches or streams. None of that here then. Cattle kept the grass short, any woods had paths through them, wire fences (un-barbed) easy to squeeze through at that age, most fields just short grass to walk across. Heaven.
On this occasion we walked to the white bridge halfway up Corselet Road then took another path that skirts the Parkhouse Estate. This is it here and it brings you out at Whitriggs Road in South Nitshill. Almost heathland here. This area used to have various thrushes, skylarks, corncrakes, yellowhammers, curlews, and linnets but with habitat loss, climate change, fewer hedgerows and insects, plus domestic UK cats killing 50 million wild birds a year it is decades since I spotted a linnet in Scotland. They like to nest in the gorse, safe from predators, but numbers have crashed since the 1960s.
And finally on this walk you get a glimpse of what it used to look like. Imagine children wandering here... where you can still walk to the horizon over short grass fields. above. Unfortunately, once you get to this horizon line, The Barrhead Dams, you find more new housing and disruption occurring. For the last three years they have been working on the Aurs Road. Setback after setback. Finally they are nearly finished but unlike the glossy billboard promise of a Barrhead utopia they have already ruined that area for me.
An old photo taken years ago... before disruption, huge water pipes and new housing. My beautiful Barrhead Dams, once buried so deep in unspoilt countryside, is just another large housing estate now. ( I can't really grumble as I was born in Kinning Park, an inner city district with few trees and zero fields or dairy cattle.... before we moved out to Pollok. Everyone wants to live in the countryside I suppose.)
So we turned in another direction. The area between Whitriggs Road and Salterland Road where grass paths still lead across the fields into the town of Barrhead. And this is still rural and untouched although not unsullied by a modern plague. Litter and dumped rubbish.
First view of Barrhead from Salterland Farm/ Road. Once in Barrhead we reached a bus stop on Glasgow Road, A736, where a 51 McGill's bus ( Barrhead to Paisley) took us back almost to where we started out. (26 bus in Paisley main street takes you to Glasgow City Centre or get a train in Paisley to Glasgow.)
A church in sunny Govan where we ended up. Neither of us going to Paisley on this occasion.
Govan rent strikes sculpture. Next to Govan bus station and underground.
An elegant period tenement in Govan.
Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Govan. A 3 to 4 hour walk at an easy pace with a lunch stop included.... and several different buses. I enjoyed it. And I think Alan did as well.
