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...

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!

Lower Campsie Glen in December

In celebration of completing our house sale I took an hour to see lower Campsie Glen with a little more water coming down. The Tolkein steps:



And the view from on the steps:



Looking back down the glen



A tributary hangs in the air



Just looking for footprints in the deep leaf mulch makes me think I am the only person to walk here for at least 4 weeks....

Snow on Ben Lomond

I went to visit "our" house in Summerston. It's a crystal clear day with what to a southerner is a hard frost, still on the ground at 2.30 and not looking like going. As you drive out of what will be our drive you can see Ben Lomond in the distance. SNOW!




EDIT: Had to drive north to Stockiemuir to get a decent view. This is not from my front drive, unfortunately!

Campsie Glen after a day's rain

I drove past Ballagan en route to Campsie Glen. It was raining and I didn't have a lot of time so a quick trip was in order, just to see if any water was coming down the falls. The white smudge in the centre of the picture is the Spout.



Yes, there is some water coming down, the heavy rain was just one day and that was two days ago. Wonder what a weekend of really heavy Winter rain will look like...



This is the same palce the last time I was here:



This is the set of falls I scrambled up last time too! Not today.



Lower drop of the easy access section of the gorge.



The flat picnic rock. A bit damp today!

Kelvin in Partick after a day's rain

First real rain for a while yesterday. No time to get out to the Campsies and the water levels are dropping already, so probably not worth looking for falls in flood tomorrow...

Here's Partick today.

Looks promising



And enjoying himself (none of this was set up by me!)



Busy chap



More Summer flowers in October



And yes, the sun does shine in Glasgow