In which the rain descends…
In the morning Alastair and I were able to squeeze in a quick bike ride before the rain started, on to the beautiful Tissington Trail which I remember from last trip. Riding up a hill to join the Tissington Trail reminded me how much work I have to do on return to get ready for the Cabot Trail in Nova Scotia, but I am at least partially there!
End of the Valley above Wirksworth
Tissington Trail
Old stone quarry on left
lovely views from up top this particular hill – the Tissington Trail goes on for miles, quite bumpy and 8% grades in parts
my guide, a source of info (second cousin, who works as a guide currently for walking tours in Europe and happily was between trips during my visit)
lovely flowers starting on the sides
On a weekend this would be really busy but with the threatening rain and light showers we had it more or less to ourselves.
A short gravel section took us down to a stone workers museum where stone workers from different regions had come together to show their various building styles. They were vastly different.
English wall – there were vast regional differences here as well
neatly avoided the plaque to the right telling me where the wall style was from…
The Scots, ever pragmatic, just piled the stones atop one another…
We reluctantly pedalled back to town and I hopped a ride with Alastair’s brother Neil to Cumbernauld, near Glasgow. He was driving a huge works van which he’d ingeniously converted into a camper van – insulated, inner cladding, electrical wiring included a phone charger, sink, stove, compost toilet and dining area. Very clever, but the works van size made it interesting at the road stops to park. There seemed to be a fair number of people on the road and the first stop, 2/3 of the way up, was steering. There was a nice farmstop for lunch, and we pulled into Cumbernauld about 4:30 pm. Interestingly, we had had a family reunion there in 2017, the last one that was held, because it was about halfway between Glasgow and Edinburgh and at that time one of the Glasgow attendees had more difficulty travelling. The rain came down enthusiastically in parts on the way up, and it gave me a chance to get to know Neil better – last met in 1996 at a family reunion and his family have just returned from Angola after 35 years of development work there. Interesting stories, and he made it through many turbulent times in the country. His wife Clare is Scottish and they were prompted to return during Covid as online education wasn’t able to be supported, so their son Lewis wasn’t getting any education. Lewis speaks fluent Portugese, the language of Angola, and now has a Scottish accent; Neil speaks fluent Danish from working in Denmark prior to Angola, and Clare is learning Arabic as well as her Portugese and Scottish as they have a Sudanese refugee living with them. They took him in three years ago at 15 yo and he has just secured a 9 month job placement at a garage with the hopes of being retained permanently. Cumbernauld seems to have a good program to support and integrate such refugees; Mubarek, their lad, came with a horrendous background story and unfortunately his father was killed recently in the ongoing war and an aunt died last week, so the pain continues for him. He is well supported by his host family, at least.
Cumbernauld is a “new town”, purpose built construction with a city centre and housing all around. Some of it is looking the worse for wear, but there is lots of green and some nice sections. Clare and Neil are rehabilitating their garden, so we had a walk around and watched some of the many episodes of the Chelsea flower show; still haven’t seen the dogpond in Monty Don’s garden! It was fun to recognize so much of the filming, even though it was annoying to have sections roped off during our time there.
The night was spent very comfortably in the camper van on the driveway, sans spiders (many decades ago on a visit to their family in Farncombe, I was housed in a little used camper van cohosted by many spiders! Fortunately being an entomologist I wasn’t much bothered).
The next morning we had a brief visit to the Kelpies (a steel structure of the mythical horses installed near Cumbernauld) and to the Falkirk Wheel, neither of which I’d seen before in my many visits to Scotland. The Falkirk Wheel was a millenium project designing a transfer system for barges from a lower canal system to a much higher point, thus avoiding multiple locks and speeding up transfer between the two canal systems immensely.
Falkirk Wheel – the top pointed section fills with water, tipping it over and the boat in the canal slowly lowers to the lower canal by gravity
fairly easy to maintain and minimal power needed, in keeping with Scottish frugality.
looking back from the upper canal
the ultimate infinity pool!
the canal system looked idyllic for barges, and there is a cycle path alongside between Edinburgh and Glasgow which looks very tempting
the Kelpies
It was a very popular tourist attraction, with busloads of tourists arriving and an extremely efficient parking attendant who relieved us of 3.50 GBP for parking.
After a quick scone and coffee at the cafe overlooking the Kelpies, watching the tourist behaviours, we headed off to the west coast, the other side of Glasgow, to Dundonald (near Troon).