Cambuslang Walk in the Rain.

                                                    ALL PHOTOS CLICK FULL SCREEN.

 

Recently I had to go through to Cambuslang for a few days. Cambuslang Church Spire above with Cambuslang Park behind it. As you can see here it was a very wet, misty October day but I still managed a four hour walk around the park and up into Holmhills Wood Community Park which lies just across the road from it.

 

Luckily, Cambuslang Park sits in a wooded gorge so it is fairly sheltered which was just as well as it rained very heavily at times reverting to light drizzle when the frequent sudden downpours relented. The start of autumn colours made it special though.

 

A good walk can be had by going up Greenlees Road past Cambuslang Institute then taking a lane on left into the park just above Kirkhill Railway Station. It seems to be in two parts. A thickly wooded gorge section at the end nearest the town centre...
 

 

...then a more open, wider section at the top end.Seen here.

 

Roughly halfway up the park you come to the hollow where this took place although back then it may have been an open hidden hollow as you would be pushed to get thousands of folk in here now with all the tree cover and stream width running through this hollow today.

 

 

The same hollow in October 2022. Following this stream up through the park should lead you into the top half.

One good thing about a wet day is any waterfalls, rivers, or streams are at their best, foaming and tumbling downhill.

 

Aromatic pine balls. If stuck in the wilds you can mash these up in water and they make a natural disinfectant for the floor as insects don't like the strong pine smell apparently. Not sure if it would work for midges in summer.

 

The top half of the park is wide, flat, and open plan with lovely, 'last of the season' colourful blooms. Still mild and damp so no overnight frosts yet to kill these Early October borders.

 

Size for size, at this late stage in the year, the Cambuslang Park flower borders easily outshone the borders in Glasgow's prestigious Botanic Gardens as I was there recently as well. Maybe it's a manpower thing. With Brexit and the cost of living crisis many people are swapping jobs for ones with higher pay as there's millions of unfilled vacancy's now, especially in the low paid sector like hospitality, the NHS, care workers, etc... and many people left or changed occupations during the pandemic.
 

 

Flower display. Cambuslang Upper Park.

 

Autumnal delights before the grey of winter seeps in.

 

A planetarium of flowers, in fact...

 Amber fungi.

 

A bench out of the rain. Lunch stop in Cambuslang Upper Park. You can also enter it from just above Cambuslang Parish Church as well, spire visible here. A handy landmark for first time visitors. Anyone wanting a full half day walk can use Cambuslang Park, Holmhills Woods, then continue down along the River Clyde Walkway from Cambuslang Bridge to Westburn for a full green circular tour of this district. Allow around 4 hours at a steady pace. Five hours if going slow with rest stops. A couple of hours if jogging round with one substantial long ascent up through the park.

 

Holmhills Wood Community Park can be found on the other side of Greenlees Road from Cambuslang Upper Park and the entrance is signposted. Instead of running up and down the slope this second park is a branch off the main truck running between Greenlees Road and West Coats Road. It's set along an open ridge line with good views over the east of the city and it used to be two derelict farms until it was replaced by the community woodland and a few wildlife ponds. I remember them being dug about a decade ago and the old farm building that used to stand here. Even ten years can see trees and bushes add fifteen feet of height to them.

 

One of the ponds with the rain hammering down.

 

'Like tears in rain.'  Autumn tree colours. A powerful dark anthem that deserves to be better known than it is. ..........Soul poetry in the lyrics. It's a classic. Some songs just grab you and this is one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQibeSkewhQ 

 

Holmhills Woodlands.

 

Wet flowers.

 

Wet and wild. A path in the rain.
 

Juicy big eating apples growing wild... so I had one. It was excellent! Forty at least remaining on this one tree though it's in another part of this walk.

 

Happy bug in the rain... as was I. Having achieved my blog ambition long ago of walking outdoors for ten years in Scotland without a raindrop ever falling on me, I didn't mind one day of bad weather. I still prefer sunshine mind you but as it's such a novelty for me to walk in the rain for a few hours I did enjoy it. And 'she' did as well. Like tears in rain.

 

A New Glasgow City Centre Walk. Murals 2022.

                                                  ALL PHOTOS CLICK FULL SCREEN.

A recent solo walk in Glasgow City Centre saw me get off at Anderston Train Station, as usual, then head over the nearby pedestrian bridge to Glasgow's banking and financial district.

 One of the reasons I like this approach so much is that on foot, from this direction, this western edge of Glasgow City Centre feels and looks like a very modern metropolis. Like the emerald city of Oz in fact. Brand new buildings springing up every couple of years to add to the ones already there.

 It's also neat, quiet and tidy here.

 On a bright sunny day this elevated pedestrian walkway into the heart of the financial district always makes me feel sunny and bright inside as well. Probably because I don't have to work there. I'm just a casual visitor. Yippee!  New bank just completed with running track on the roof.

 

 

Just like the emerald city of Oz all that glass and steel requires maintenance. There they presumably have flying monkeys to polish all the buildings... as I know for a fact that the Wicked Witch Esmeralda hires them out on contract when they are not harassing Dorothy. 

 

Here we have similar creatures, skilled at working in high places.

 I thought the Moda Living Complex nearby would have been finished by now but they are still working on it, as you can see here...

 Likewise the new building on Argyle Street, seen here, which is nearing completion.

I then popped down to the River Clyde Waterfront to see the other, (Kingston Street) side of the Barclays Bank Complex. Some of the buildings here are brand new...

Others are old buildings they have managed to save and repurpose. Note the red metal balcony at the rear of this property...

 

This is the back elevation of the same building. Although it is fairly colourful now it does look unfinished somehow to my eyes and for a few bucks more and a few cans of paint it could look eye-catching and outstanding... from even half a mile away.

 My own idea for it.... to jazz it up a little. Just a thought.... Can you spot a dog and a hippopotamus?

 They are still working on some of it... this may be a multi storey car park at a guess?

 The front profile along the River Clyde Waterfront. They now have the flower borders in place.

 

Walkway/cycle-track along the front elevation of Barclays Bank Complex.

 

 

Decorative border display.

 

Although I was not really collecting murals I just happened to stumble across a few I hadn't captured before. This is by Mack Colours, the same guy(s) that put murals up in the abandoned
Shawbridge Arcade featured a few posts ago on here. Canary in a coal mine?

 

Both of these are found along the waterfront beside Clyde Street and the suspension bridge.

 Virus mural?

 

Suspended Female.

Corvid not Covid. I say 'guys' as there's more than one name tag by the looks of it

Railway Mural.

 

Glasgow Subway Mural. Nicknamed decades ago as 'The Clockwork Orange.'

All five murals found on Osborne Street near this pet shop and the Saltmarket. When I was a child I'm sure I bought my yellow budgie/ canary, my terrapin, tortoise, and hamster here.

 

Retro red bus.

 

Retro 1970s colours. I went to school in this type of bus and this particular colour scheme for many years.  Number 48 and number 49 Nitshill or Priesthill. I could get either, the latter involved a 15 minute walk.  Didn't think anything of it at the time but looking at it now it might only please one half of Glasgow :o)

 

St Andrews Parish Church. Built 1756. 

 

Amazing to think this was built only ten years after the famous battle at Culloden 1n 1746 when the Highlands were finally crushed and subdued a year after Bonnie Prince Charlie landed in Scotland to kick-start the Jacobite Rebellion.  1756 was also the year when the Black Hole of Calcutta incident occurred. Poet Robert Burns was born a few years later in Ayrshire.

 

The adjacent St Andrew's Square. It's a beautiful restored development here but it always feels empty and desolate somehow... probably because you never see any residents coming and going or children playing outside. It usually looks like this. Very quiet.

 

 

Does have some lovely stone carving details though in this vicinity. Glasgow's coat of arms and motto.

 

 

The bird that never rang.. the tree that never flew... the bell that never swam.. the fish that never grew.... something like that anyway....

A study of a women in black mural....

A series of black and white portraits in this district by a well known street artist. This is just two of them.

Collegelands District.

Avenues and alleyways in Collegelands.

 

Collegelands and the University District.

 

Which brought me out at the Ingram Street murals of the four seasons. Autumn.

Summer. Photographed these murals around eight to ten years ago on the blog so I was very surprised how well the colours have held up. Hardly faded at all and still one of the real highlights of Glasgow's mural trail.

Winter.

 

Bee in meadow. A mural detail.

 

Indigenous peoples mural. Merchant city. Painted for the recent Cop 26 and climate change but could also stand for the original populations of North and South America during first contact with Europeans which within a few hundred years of exploration and exploitation managed to wipe out more than 130 million citizens or around 90 percent of the original inhabitants of each country there through disease, slavery, neglect, and torture than most of dead of the various European Wars we celebrate every year and remember to this day. It is what it is.

 

 

Same mural. A close up detail.

And across the street... high up on a nearby building... two passionate dancers are entwined.

 And a cracking tasty meal when I got home. Broad beans, sausage, baby spuds with butter, salad cream, fried cherry tomatoes, fried onions, boiled egg. Yum yum.