Wednesday 27 January 2010

Kelvin Walkway to Milngavie

Walked the Kelvin Walkway from my house to Milngavie (pronounced Mill Guy!). The river is not exactly pretty on a grey day in late January... But it will make great flat water canoeing ground for the open canoe in summer!




The Central Lowlands do power lines, lots of them!




This is the Balmuildy Bridge carrying the A879 Glasgow to Milngavie road.



Right along side is the main water supply to Northern Glasgow, and the Kelvin Walkway footbridge.



A tree which seems to have had a hard time at some point in the past!



The walk up the Allander from the Kelvin to Milngavie is quite flat and largely straightened for a big chunk of the way, but the reward is the mill weir in the carpark of Tesco's:



Quite possible in flood, looked OK last week with just an extra 3 or 4 inches on the main drop...


Monday 18 January 2010

Ballagan in T shirt weather (January)

Another walk to Ballagan, this time dragging along my son David. As always, the walk from Strathblane and through the grounds of Ballagan House:



having seen from the road that plenty of water is coming down:



Once in to the reserve we dropped straight down to the burn and followed the bank up in to the gorge. This is the unstable sedimentary west bank. We were about 100 yards on from here when the noise of a rockfall echoed round the glen. Impressive. Keep off of the west bank!



An older minor fall had turned this young birch upside down. Not keen on reverse gravity, it soon found its way back upwards!



The excellent well made up footpath demonstrated here. We'd been pushed away from the water by narrow waterfalls and were scrambling round them. Not vertical but a lot steeper than it looks. The white blur through the trees in the background is the stream, about 150 foot below us...



Getting closer to the main falls, which clearly shows as a triple drop here:



The main fall from close to. Worth the scramble.



View back on the scramble out



A minute icicle still here after three warm days. In the deep frost I suspect the Spout was a 60 foot icicle. A sad fact of practicalities that there was no chance to get here then!