History today

Well that was quite a day.  After a bit of experimentation yesterday with my elastic cargo net, my old motorbike helmet and the top of Mirabel's pannier rack, I cycled into town for the train through to Glasgow.  On the station concourse, of all the people to bump into it was my brand new colleague, who started in my team just this week.

In Glasgow I had a nice slightly random ride to the motorbike shop, and they were true to their word: my helmet was all mended!  They also reinstalled the Cardo communication system, doing it about ten times faster than it took me.  I tried on lots of winter gloves while I was there, because my own ones are 16 years old, and have been crashed in and ground along the tarmac, which is why there is a hole in one of the fingers (and a copy of an X-ray on my computer!).  And they're simply not that warm anymore for these rubbish Reynaudy fingers.  I wasn't really planning to buy a new pair, but these new ones fit so beautifully I couldn't not.

Ah ha!  But I'm in Glasgow!  So there was nothing for it but to cycle into the wind and rain and sunshine, out along the Dumbarton Road to Clydebank.  At the shopping centre by the Forth & Clyde Canal I found my target, a Lion Foundry model no.25 bandstand.  It used to live further east, in Victoria Park.  It has been refurbished once or twice with a new roof structure, and the ironwork is quite rusty in places, and while its situation feels like it's marooned somewhat, it still looks pretty good.

After that it was off to find something else from the Kirkintilloch Foundry Challenge, and then I cycled back into town.  I'd passed the Clyde Tunnel on my way out.  I visited the tunnel during an open day on its 50th anniversary when we got to see the engine room and wander down along the road tunnel.  But I'd never been through the pedestrian/cycle tunnel before, so that was a fun little adventure.  It's very cold down there, the plasterwork really could do with some attention, and the exit on the southern side is really, really steep!

Back along the south side of the Clyde took me through Govan.  I was heading for Festival Park, but on the way I suddenly realised I was at Govan Cross and there was the drinking fountain, complete with the little cherub boy (a "putto") who was used as the reference for the Burns Memorial fountain in Dalkeith.  This drinking fountain canopy is quite deluxe as it has six sides rather than four, and is dedicated to Dr John Aitken.  The plaque records that he died in 1880, aged 41.  The canopy features six excellently preserved crocodiles.

Festival Park is a far cry from its heyday of the 1988 Glasgow Garden Festival, which was itself built on the mostly filled-in Princes Dock.  Since the festival they've built houses on part of the park, plus the BBC and STV and some government buildings, so now it's a long and fairly narrow park with a nice pond that is still being improved.  But there are a few remains of the festival.  I found this sort of once-cascading water feature with a rockery and what would've been a pool.  Maybe it was part of a Japanese garden?  I wandered all around and it was quite peaceful and muddy and overgrown.    There is an amazing photograph on Wikipedia and you can see the cascade on the far side.

At the pond they have uncovered some old shallow steps and these were also part of the garden festival.  In the third Wikipedia photo the pond is more like a small river and you can actually see the steps at the left-hand end.

I returned along the Clyde path on the north side, and took a mid-afternoon train back to Edinburgh.  The gales of last night and this morning had mostly abated, so I had a lazy tired legs cycle homewards in quite pleasantly mild temperatures.  I'm rather glad that I didn't ride Fidra the Pan Euro to Glasgow after all: I would have missed out on so much!