Rat Race Run Britannia - Week 4, day 2 - Strathclyde Park to Milngavie


Suburbia 2

Distance: 41.01km (total so far 972.39km)
Total climb: 449m (total so far 16,763m)
Steps: 46,281 (total so far 1,163,431)

Since today's route took us straight through the middle of Glasgow and out the other side, we were expecting a day similar to the end of week 2, when we spent a lot of the day on town streets. Actually, this turned out to be very different.

Instead, for the morning, we got more country park, working along the banks of the Clyde. The surface was good, and the forecast showers held off at least initially, so we were able to walk along happily.


On occasion, we were following the Clyde a bit too closely - one path along the edge was so eroded that care was needed not to experience the Clyde at first hand! However, on the occasions we got some height to look down on it, the view was worth it.


We also passed a ruined castle, presumably guardian of someone's holding in the past - now in more danger of falling down on you than anything else.


We left the Clyde behind for a while and headed inland across some fields, but when we rejoined it things were much more urban, and the path ran beside the Clyde for the next 15km or so. Unhappily, the walls and fences were usually decorated, which took away from the effect a bit.


We crossed the Clyde backwards and forwards, sometimes seemingly randomly as we followed the route given. However, it did give us lots of different bridges to look at.


The route wasn't unpleasant, but was a little monotonous, particularly in the bits where you couldn't see the river because of bushes and trees, and you couldn't see in the other direction because of the decorated fences. However, we eventually ended up following the river into central Glasgow.


The lunchtime feedstation was in the car park of the Riverside Museum, and after stocking up on lunch some of us couldn't resist a little look around - what the locals thought of us wandering around in our running kit I have no idea. It was a mostly transport museum, with exhibits old and new (or at least before-me and during-me).


And the incredible Chopper bicycle - never was something so impractical such a hit!


Having extracted myself from the museum, the afternoon was walking alongside the Kelvin waterway, named after the man himself.


The rain was still trying, but it mostly held off.


We turned off the waterway and finished up the road to Milngavie. Its pronounced "Mull-guy". No, I don't know either. With at least four Scots in the party, we're not allowed to get it wrong!

Song of the day - sorry, Glasgow, but you need to find a way of restricting the paint cans. Every surface is graffitid, and while some of it is genuine art most of it isn't, and it does drag the walk down. So the song is "Dirty Old Town" by the Pogues.








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