Day Forty One

Saturday 24 July – Blantyre to Glasgow

No waterproofs again – two days in a row. My walk had hardly got underway before I diverted to visit the David Livingstone Centre at Blantyre. The National Trust for Scotland have incorporated Livingstone’s birthplace – a room in a tenement originally connected to Blantyre’s cotton mills – into a museum depicting his life and work as a missionary in Africa. It’s delightfully old-fashioned (genuine compliment intended).

For instance, as you walk along a darkened corridor, you press buttons to light up a succession of tableaux, each of which is a beautiful low-relief sculpture depicting an episode of his life, including the famous meeting with HM Stanley (“Doctor Livingstone, I presume.” “Er, no, he’s just popped out. Can you call again next week?”).

Maps and artefacts illustrate Livingstone’s travels, with dressing-up stuff for kids and things to look at and sometimes touch at a child’s eye level. It’s all very nicely done. Livingstone’s opposition to the slave trade is particularly well covered. His technique was cunning. He gathered up examples of the instruments of restraint and torture, and sent them back to England. One look at a set of iron manacles or a forked stick adapted to trap an African neck was bound to have its effect, and it did.

There is an explorers’ garden, lush and mysterious, and a visitor centre, where coffee and something was taken. Then I went for a walk.

I picked up the Clyde Walkway a few yards from the centre (the Walkway had resumed good behaviour after yesterday’s lapse). The cotton mills do not survive, but the weir remains, with a bridge across it taking me back to the right bank of the river Both banks are thickly wooded, and the path climbs and dips through the trees to find a route along what has again become a steep-sided valley. After a mile I climbed more steeply to pass below the ramparts of Bothwell Castle.

Scotland’s largest 13th Century Castle, Bothwell was built by the Moray family, and besieged by Edward I during the Wars of Independence. It was rebuilt later by the Black Douglases (good name). What remains looked very impressive against a glowering sky (no sun today, despite the lack of rain).

In another mile there was a lengthy diversion away from the river. A very nice chap at the David Livingstone Centre had advised me to take a train past this diversion, but he took it in good part when I explained that it would be against the “rules”. He had been concerned about a main road, but I was lucky and caught it at a quiet time, and for the rest the route was perfectly pleasant, although not exactly as shown on the map (surprise!). For a short while I was walking along, not the Clyde but a tributary called the Rotten Calder – I found out that the Rotten Burn and Calder Water combine under this name, but I didn’t find a derivation for Rotten (although I didn’t look very hard).

Back by the Clyde, I passed an aerial ropeway across the river. It’s on the map, but there were no Tarzans about today. I was now walking through pleasant meadows on a dirt path, but soon the National Cycle Network’s Route 75 swept in from the South. Path and cycleway were one for the remainder of the journey into Glasgow, so good surfaces were expected and delivered.

I walked beneath the Missing Link, not as hazardous as it sounds. This is not some half-man, half-ape stalking the outskirts of the city, rather it is the closure of a gap between the M74 (aka A74(M), which I had been shadowing for a week) and Glasgow’s own domestic motorway, the M8. What I walked under was the part crossing the river, the Auchenshuggle Bridge. You can’t imagine how pleased I was to be given an excuse to write Auchenshuggle. So, more motorway – what joy.

Meandering followed. Not just me – river, path and I all twisted and turned through some very tight loops, until the way was blocked by building work. The diversion lay through the steets of Dalmarnock. There is a lot of derelict land here, some tenements abandoned and some surprisingly still occupied. They may be little palaces inside, but outside they are dire.

A sign of hope was literally a sign, announcing the construction of the Athletes’ Village for the 2014 Commonwealth Games on one of the cleared sites.

Back at the river, I was walking past a partly-decayed landing stage, when I noticed that it was equipped with a scaffolding-and-plastic shelter, a saggy picnic chair, and a bench. I sat on the bench for another late lunch. As I was finishing, a fisherman cycled up. I asked him if I’d pinched his spot. “Nae bother – there’s plenty of room, pal.” He hollered a greeting to a chum further down the river, and started fishing. I resumed my walk.

The map showed that I was now well into the city, surrounded by housing and commercial buildings, but the riverside was mostly still wooded and apparently rural, with occasional urban interruptions. A large sewage works was completely hidden by a high concrete wall which has been the canvas for hundreds of graffiti artists, or one very versatile and industrious one. I started to walk under a succession of handsome bridges, road and rail. A plaque on a wall explained which was which.

I realised that the green space opening up on my right was an outlier of Glasgow Green. Passing beneath a main road, I reached the Green itself. First given to the people of Glasgow in the 15th Century (when it was bog), this park has been altered and improved ever since, any attempts to encroach on it being seen off by jealous Glaswegians. Wikipedia tells us that Bonnie Prince Charlie camped there (no surprise there – he camped everywhere), but more interestingly that “in 1765, James Watt, while wandering aimlessly across the Green, conceived the idea of the separate condenser for the steam engine.” How do they know?

The centrepiece of the Green is the People’s Palace, the splendid combination of winter garden, museum and greenhouse. The obelisk commemorating Nelson was incongruously surrounded by the rides and stalls of a funfair.

From here it was a quick walk to my hotel, with a little light shopping on the way.