Three grans on Clyde Walkway Stage 1

Two of us were coming from north-west and one from south-east of Glasgow Exhibition Centre. One of us thought we were meeting at the railway station, one of us thought we were meeting at the Exhibition Centre, and one hadn't a clue. We all got together eventually, not helped by text messages not arriving promptly, nor by one of us having forgotten to check she had LanarkshireGran's number on her new phone.

Exhibition Centre coffees and loos being sufficiently tested, we set off. Here is LanarkshireGran (LG) and LittleSheBear (LSB) in the foreground with the Finnieston Crane and the arc of Squinty Bridge (officially "Clyde Arc" Bridge but everyone calls it Squinty; this is Glasgow after all! 🙂) beyond. We set off eastwards. Below is the view looking back towards the BBC Scotland building and another arc: Glasgow Science Centre.

LSB

Looking back again to Squinty Bridge. The dome-roofed building to the left of Squinty is the southern Rotunda. There is another on the northern side of the river and a tunnel runs between them.

This link takes you to a page that has a good photo taken from above, of both Rotundas and Squinty, plus a bit of history.

Squiggley Bridge, Glasgow

Within minutes we had come to a dead end. Clearly my talent at homing in on dead ends has not diminished. Diggory would have been proud of me (Diggory was my old car many moons ago; he often led me on round about scenic routes and into dead ends). We could have walked back and around the building but we decided to climb over the fence, up a ladder and over another fence. LSB, being the youngest, led the way and hoiked LG and me over.

The next bridge along (yes, I love bridges!) is officially called the Tradeston Bridge. Unofficially – this being Glasgow, and there being a Squinty Bridge already when it was built – Squiggley Bridge.

Squiggley Bridge

And so we trundled along, enjoying the bright sunshine and light reflected off the river. The photo to the right was taken from the shade of the King George V Bridge and looking towards the second Caledonian Rail Bridge, the pillars of the first, four-track, Caledonian Rail Bridge and, furthest away, Glasgow Bridge which is also known as Jamaica Street Bridge.

Just beyond the Jamaica Street Bridge, on Custom House Quay, is the sculpture, La Pasionaria, by Arthur Dooley (1929-1994). The inscriptions below it say:

"Better to die on your feet than live for ever on your knees", Dolores Ibárruri (1895-1989).

"The City of Glasgow and the British Labour Movement pay tribute to the courage of those men and women who went to Spain to fight Fascism 1936-1939. 2,100 went from Britain, 534 were killed, 65 of whom came from Glasgow."

There were lots (lots!) of rowers on the river, and quite a few rowing coaches cycling along the walkway (which is also a cycle track) yelling instructions to the boats. The boats went by so fast I had difficulty getting a good shot of them.

Along the way someone had stuck feathers into the cracks where a tree branch had been cut off.

feather decorations

We crossed Shawfield Footbridge to eat our picnic lunches on the other side. Further inland from the footbridge is the Shawfield Greyhound Stadium. There is a good stretch of cleared land between the stadium and the river, which is presumably going to be developed at some stage.

When we had crossed back to the north side of the river, though after Shawfield Footbridge it was more like the east side because there's a bunch of big meanders at this part, I managed to get a shot of some of the rowers from a distance.

Strathclyde Public School, built in 1903, is near Shawfield Footbridge. The school closed as a school in 1974. Apparently it was reopened as a business centre in 1999.

The last old bridge in this post is the Dalmarnock Rail Bridge, seen here through the pillars and ironwork of an older rail bridge. The last new bridge is this one below that's so new it's not on the maps or Google yet.

A little before we crossed the river at Cambuslang we were reminded of the planet's plastic bag plague by this "plastic bag tree" on the riverbank. When the sluices at New Lanark are opened the river water level rises quite a lot. The low branches of this tree have snagged floating plastic bags.

LSB had researched the availability of refreshments at Cambuslang so we repaired to Morrison's Supermarket café for hot drinks and snackeroos.

Altogether a lovely day. The sun shone on us all the way and the low temperatures meant we didn't get too hot tramping along. We were also, of course, most congenial company for each other.

Watch this pace for accounts of our further trampings along the Clyde Walkway.

New brush cutter and chanterelles

First go with my new brush cutter in the morning cool. I like it and it will make a big difference to how much I can get done in a given time. The only trouble is that I couldn't start the engine. I had to get Toad to do it. I was thinking maybe I would have to buy a more expensive Stihl machine with an "ergo" starter cord. Then, thinking "what have we missed?", I did a quick google and learnt what we'd missed from this young lad.

We'd missed the whojimmyflippy squeezy button thing (fuel pump priming button?). I've just followed young lad's instructions and the strimmer engine started. Woohoo!

The strimmer came with a single shoulder strap. I've ordered a better two-shoulder harness but in the meantime, thinking about how DerbyshireDaughter tied her babies on her back with a long piece of strong fabric, I reckoned there must be something I could cobble together. I found an old strap (the blue one) that had hook attachments on the ends and, though it looks odd from the front, having a strap over each shoulder and crossed over at the back does spread the weight satisfactorily and comfortably. The only drawback is that the blue strap is a fraction too short if I want the business end of the machine to get closer to the ground. It'll do fine for the tall rough stuff till the harness arrives.






In other news, on Thursday I rang the farmer who has the field next to us on lease about a dead sheep. For the last four weeks or so there has been a flock of sheep, ewes and big lambs, in the field. This has meant I can ease off my attacks on the Himalayan Balsam that was thriving just over the fence and also that the bracken has been trampled down by the farmer's quad bike when he checked the sheep-proof-ness of the fence. We wouldn't mind a few sheep in the garden (they could do some much needed grass and weed munching) but there's no gate into the lane and they could would wander off down to the road.

The dead sheep looked as if something had attacked it by the throat. Big dog on the loose?

I had to tell an adventurous lamb to get back in the field just the other day after I saw it in the lane. I wasn't sure how it would work when I walked towards it along the boggy lane, but it just squeezed under the gate using one of the deep ruts.

Yesterday someone came for the carcass and the rest of the sheep vanished very quickly without my noticing how. The only way this could happen is if they were driven over the broken bridge across the burn at the back. The stream runs parallel to our back fence inside the wood above us and then does a turn down hill where it falls steeply down to the loch along with another burn coming straight down the hill. There is an old bridge made of wooden railway sleepers after the streams join.





The bridge used to be strong enough for a tractor or a herd of cattle but five or six years ago I had to ring the farmer because Toadlet and her friend had casually told me that there was a dead cow in the burn when they came in for tea!

I hope it was a quick death for the poor animal. I think we would have heard it if it had been lowing in distress. Presumably a couple of the old sleepers gave way under its weight, or it lost its footing on the slippery surface. Fortunately other heifers didn't follow it but went back the way they'd come.


It would seem that the couple of remaining sleepers, which are strong enough for people to cross, are also allright for sheep.

The farmer brought a small digger when he came to collect the cow but it wasn't big enough to reach into the ravine so he had to go for a bigger one. This ended with my seeing at our front gate the bizarre scene of a cow hoisted by a rope being transferred from big digger to small digger before it was taken away.

On the other side of the bridge (in the photo on the left I'm looking back towards our back garden fence) the farmer had cut back some rhododendron (the muddy patch) and stacked it in such a way as to guide the sheep the way he wanted them to go. The space between our back and the bridge had been used as a holding area a couple of times and the sheep had chomped all the vegetation so my way to collect chanterelle mushrooms just before the bridge was well clear. It's chanterelle mushrooms in a creamy pasta sauce for tea tonight. Yumtastic.

Last September the lane between our back fence
and the forest looked liked this: a single file roe
deer and chanterelle hunter's path.

An old bridge over Kinglas Water

On the way home from Inverary we stopped to take a closer look at the old bridge over Kinglas Water. It was built by Redcoats and formed part of the old military road through Argyll.

An elegant old bridge

Water under the bridge ;)

Underbridge view

Bridge stonework

Old bridge, elegant

Modern bridge, not elegant

View from the old bridge – still a spot or two of snow in the hill gulleys

Another Drinker Moth caterpillar by the old bridge