River Avon Walkway signs solve a puzzle

Digging through some unused pics I collected recently (maybe not all that recently, as I see we’ve now had a continuous run of more than 28 days! – a month – of rain), I solved a puzzle I’d made for myself in that time.

I tend to be fussy about place and feature names, and refer to maps and literature for what is most likely to be the correct option.

In this case, I’d been labelling items with the term ‘River Avon’, when I noticed all the maps showed the waterway in question to be marked as ‘Avon Water’.

So… I felt the need to go through everything and change any reference to River Avon to Avon Water.

I still wondered why I’d gone for River Avon, since I would only have used that if I’d seen it – yet it wasn’t on the maps.

You’ll see the reason why in the pics below, where the path signs all seem to use River Avon, so I wasn’t just being careless 🙂

The first pic shows the start/finish of the path from Hamilton Low Green, or Strathclyde Park if you prefer.

The second is on the route.

The third is more interesting, and I should have taken a better pic – this is at the back entrance into the grounds of Chatelherault, and offers access to a number of different paths thought the grounds, to different features.

Note the tiny sign prohibiting bikes – not that you’d really want to ride this path, unless you like having a mucky bike covered with the sort of fine black mud that comes from such paths, and the puddles on it.

I’m kind of glad I walked this path (unintentionally), as I now know the correct way to cycle to Chatelherault is to carry on PAST this entrance, along a proper road, and staying reasonably clean.

Don’t miss the ‘Falling Rocks’ signs either – I didn’t have to avoid any falling at the time, but that’s one fragile hillside you’ll spend quite some time beside/below.

River Avon Walkway to Chatelherault

The last sign I noted (and there are quite a few others to find while wandering around) was the Heritage Trail Marker – yet another of those white markers I seem to have completely missed in the past.

If you like a nice, slow, casual walk, then this is the place for you.

I couldn’t time my walk TO Chatelherault (I explored too many things on the way), but I did return to Hamilton directly, via the route along Avon Water, even stopping for a few pics on the way, and far from taking 75 minutes, and not hurrying, I made the return trip to the first marker shown above in a mere 50 minutes.

If it is actually 5.2 km, that’s 3.2 miles, and means I was still walking at less than 4 mph.

Chatelherault Heritage Trail Marker

When LEDs play in the park

It’s not just the Trumptards that show how dumb a vast portion of the population is.

In my own ‘industry’, I’m ‘shocked and surprised’ to find former colleagues who actively refuse to adopt LED lighting on the basis of some fantasy that it is rotting people’s brains, and even poisoning them simply be being installed. They even think that the banning of manufacturing various other forms of lighting is the basis of some government founded conspiracy (like mask mandates and Covid-19 vaccines) to bring around some sort of mass population influence.

While I’m not going to dwell on this, I would say I only wish events could somehow be reversed, and we could hear their views on incandescent lighting, had we been able to develop LED before that. Given how they seem to idolise incandescent lamps and vilify LED lighting, it would be most enlightening to see how their arguments against the evils of ‘new’ incandescent were formed in favour of their retention against ‘good old reliable, safer, and more natural LED lighting’ were crafted.

Back in the real world, the higher efficiency of LEDs, and greater capacity of lithium based, portable power banks (in place of fossil fuel powered generators with noisy internal combustion engines), means ordinary people (with enough cash to buy those horrendously over-priced power banks) can now create near daylight condition in pitch-dark area in complete silence.

I was intrigued to see such a thing as I walked home last, and saw a pool of light in the middle of the blackness of my local park.

There’s absolutely no public or street lighting nearby, for at least 200 meters, so the place really is completely dark to the eye – and, for the moment, nearly all the street lighting is still low-pressure sodium.

Luckily, I had a decent low-light camera with me, but no decent support anywhere.

I took a load of shots, and was lucky to get one that was useable, with little shake and blurring.

Seems one of our local weight loss or health/exercise clubs has decided that it can justify its crazy fees by taking the gullible on group outings in the dark now.

I just think it’s sad to see all these people (invariably female around here) being told to run and jump etc.

Do they really not have the willpower to these things on their own, or even just go for a run, and need some overpaid ‘Personal Trainer’ to make them do it?

Anyway…

I think I need to emphasise that although this pic shows surrounding detail (notably mostly sodium yellow), to the eye alone all that was visible was the area in the pool of white light – the surrounding area, and even the patch of sky which can be seen in the pic, was all completely BLACK, with nothing visible.

Night games in the park

I’ve just had a thought – given the date, maybe I was lucky to be in the darkness, unseen, and just missed capturing a witches’ coven at play!

The dog gate of Philly – Surprise revisit when it looked better

I took a chance grab from a video recently, when I spotted ‘The dog gate of Philly’ was visible (it’s usually hidden behind rubbish).

Looks like I should have waited for a better video to come along.

The waffle is in that original post, if you want the alternative view and some ramblings.

This time, I spent the time fixing the screen grab, which came out at a crazy angle, and with chunks missing.

But, this time you get to see the whole gate, the adjoining panels, and can even spot the shiny chrome padlock keeping the area locked away from anybody that might want to wander in and set up home there.

Dog Gate of Philly – better catch

The only real mistake I made here was not noting the dates the videos were shot, so I really don’t know which came first.

Suffice to say I’ve never even seen either of the two panels to the right – they’ve always been hidden behind rubbish and stuff hung over the fence.

The dog gate of Philly – it’s new… it’s history

I bumped today’s intended post after a chance find in a video from the US.

I’d caught glimpses of the metal artwork on this gate on a number of previous occasions, but these glimpses seldom showed any of the detail as the gate is usually hidden by various pieces of cloth, typically old clothes, sheets, or blankets.

For once, it was almost in the clear, but still needed two grabs to get the full detail.

When the animal on the left (I suspect these are dogs, and the enclosed area behind was once supposed to be a ‘Doggie Park’) is easy to see, the one on the right, which is an outline rather than a silhouette, just disappears into the background. I was able to pick it out by taking an earlier grab, when it was exposed by a light wall in the background.

Sad to say, this facility appears to be no more, as the area has been taken over by ‘undesirables’, and the gates appear to be locked, so the residents couldn’t even use it if they wanted to. Few like to play the game of ‘Dodge the needle’, or ‘Infection roulette’.

I have to be honest and say I thought these looked more like cats than dogs, but I’m bowing to probability after spotting the collar on the outline version, and I think ‘cat parks’ are rare compared to ‘dog parks’. After all, thanks to our feline overlords training us to use litter boxes, not many have the need to take their cats out to do their ‘business’.

The Dog Gate of Philly

This appears to have been a fairly recent ‘upgrade’, as I have pics of the same spot dated 2019, and these show nothing more than a chain link fence enclosing this piece of ground.

The car in the park

Just a car in a park, but not a car park.

A few may recognise the location (it’s a handy shortcut), for the rest it’s probably worth noting that this park is about 100 metres from the nearest road, with only an access track and car park nearby.

The obviously stolen car wasn’t really hidden, but that wouldn’t really have mattered anyway, as there’s the slightest of chances someone in the nearby houses just might have spotted the blaze. This must have been a good one, as not only has anything flammable gone, so have many pieces of lightweight metal. I don’t think it would even be easy to work out that this must have been RHD, given the relative absence of clues in the interior.

Funny thing was the lack of tracks in the grass – all I could find was the one single line seen in the grassy pic

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Disappointingly did NOT find a secret portal to the underworld in Barrowfield

Reviewing a route out of Glasgow on Google Maps, I was surprised to see what looked like a portal descending deep into the Earth.

This was unexpected as I knew the area and, the last time I saw it, it was just a piece of bare, spare ground.

I guess the mistake shows I spend too much time looking at things which are paths leading underground, or into hillsides, and the idea of anything similar being something else doesn’t spring to mind.

This clip from Google Earth shows the aerial view, looking like a road along the top of the images, leading to a spiral path disappearing underground, as the darker vegetation to the upper right of the hill gives the impression of a depression with shadow, rather than something rising into the light.

Barrowfield Community Park and Skatepark

Of course, in reality it is just the opposite.

In fact, it’s a relatively new park recently created in Barrowfield, complete with a play park and skatepark, and a small tumulus, or hill, with a tarmacked path, and dates from 2016.

Sadly, there don’t appear to be any proper reviews of the skatepark, and only one derogatory entry on Google, by someone I suspect would not know what a skateboard was if you placed it in her hand with a sign.

I had to go look at the ‘portal’, and came back with some pics (and disappointment).

Barrowfield play park and skatepark

I took that pic from atop the small hill in the park, which means the path I had hoped spiralled down into the bowels of the Earth – actually just leads to the top of that small hill.

It’s not possible to stand far enough back in the corner where the hill is, and catch the path, so I ended up having to stitch three shots together to get one view.

Barrowfield Park Hill and path

Otherwise, taken from where you CAN stand further back, all you get is the hill, and no path, like this, to give a better idea of its height.

Barrowfield Park Hill

The straight features are just concrete standing areas, arranged along the side of the path, so they’re not even the road they might have been, as seen in the aerial view.

Barrowfield Park Path Concrete Borders

It’s fairly well hidden/screened from London Road, and even the road running alongside, so I’d never have noticed this other on Google’s aerial view.

Cuningar Loop Woodland Park set to change AGAIN

(And they haven’t even STARTED on the FIRST set of changes they announced 2 years ago).

It’s not really all that long ago when I noticed the first announcement of plans to change the nearly new Cuningar Loop Woodland Park – back in 2018 I noted Cuningar Loop needs ‘improving’ already

Like most nonsense connected to the dopey Commonwealth Games of 2014, publicity back in the day (probably all deleted now) touted this project as being an attraction that visitors to the games would be able to enjoy while they were taking a break from all the frantic sporting activity.

The park did eventually get finished, and opened in 2016.

I had been visiting the site for some years prior to 2014, frustrated in my efforts to take a walk and explore the former derelict lands I’d often viewed from across the River Clyde, but had not realised had an interesting past. In fact, from my viewpoint of the Clyde Walkway, it looked as if the area was possibly old residential land, as the places I could glimpse the land between the trees seemed to be occupied by old houses and sheds, and intriguingly, quite a lot of vehicles, including lorries. I took that as a sign that someone unknown wandering around those properties was not likely to be welcome.

As usual, assumptions were wrong, and it seems that what I could see was only relevant to the southern part of the loop, and the more northern area was some sort of derelict wood, which I found others had visited and explored.

Unfortunately, by the time I began to walk that far, I found that the area was enclosed by contractor’s security fencing, and all road access was blocked by contractor’s site gates together with copious warning signs regarding unauthorised access.

Cuningar Loop works

After a few years of regular visits, in the hope of seeing information posted about when the park might open, I eventually gave it up as a lost cause, and just made an occasional diversion for a look, just to see if anything was changing – but it always looked much the same.

In fact, my visits became so infrequent it came as something of a shock to see articles about the park having opened, and I didn’t actually make a first visit to see the open park until 2017, despite the place having opened in 2016 – I think there’s a saying regarding ‘watched pots’ and ‘never boiling’ which seems strangely appropriate to this.

Fast forward past the first set of changes I mentioned above, and we now have a SECOND set being announced in 2020.

The new plans will see a welcome addition to the original park area, integrating the remaining 9 hectares left unused by the original park, roughly doubling its area.

One of the notable issues I noted in the original park was how quickly it filled with people once it became known and popular – it simply didn’t have space to absorb lots of visitors on a really nice sunny day. While I don’t intend to sound glum or negative, there is a slight case of the downside of success.

The new plan will bring a 9 hectare development including open space, a path network, woodland planting, land regrading, a boardwalk and street furniture plus more car parking.

Interesting that it includes that last item (more car parking). While I don’t have issues with such things (this car hate thing is being grossly overdone by some nowadays), given the growing hostility by some council members/groups/activists, I’m almost surprised to see such things gaining approval.

Read details here:

GO-Ahead Given For Major Expansion Of River Clyde Urban Park

Cuningar Evolve Sculpture

Sad to say, I’ve hardly seen the place this year, so all I can come up with is a pic of the sculpture on the way in.

Things actually started fairly well – I found that this is the ONLY park anywhere near my home where I might be able to practice a sport I took up at the tail end of 2019, when I was almost immediately thwarted by a combination of lack of experience and rotten weather. Plans went on hold until things improved – and I discovered you can’t really practice fast outdoor (or that need space) sports while indoors.

Reaching the park is not ideal, taking about an hour on foot. I tried the bus a few times, but even that still takes well over half an hour – and even that excluded both waiting time for the bus plus a walk of almost 25 minutes to get from the nearest bus stop to the park (and forgetting another 10 minutes to get my local bus stop).

The bike wins easily on this occasion, with a point to point (home doorstep to park entrance) time of 25 minutes being the norm, and I even managed to shave that to 20 minutes after new pop-up bike routes were placed on the road, as a result of Covid-19 measures.

However, instead of having clocked up at least 40+ hours of practice in the park, I managed only 4 hours before I found going out and bumping into covidiots took any fun out of things.

I wouldn’t mind so much, but as it’s seasonal, and I don’t really have that many years to go, losing one or more of them hurts.

Grumpy footnote

WordPress has become extremely demotivating as a writing platform, DESPITE their claims to the contrary. It may be widely used, but I suggest that’s down to the large user base the original created, rather than the quality of the ‘NEW and Improved’ version now being imposed on users.

When I lost my Internet connection for an extended period last year, I didn’t hurry back – in part, due to the aggravation of having to check EVERY post I made using the Classic Editor, since I am a refusenik as far as using WordPress’ crappy Block Editor goes.

There seen to be TWO major flaws:

1. When I check a post I’ve created in Classic, I often find formatting is no longer as I intended, and images are not aligned as I set them (even if I looked at the post immediately after posting). I also found that if I edited an existing post, there was every likelihood that when it was saved – the original image alignment I set would have been changed.
2. Opening an existing post in the great new Block Editor always seemed to screw up the original formatting, and made recreating the desired formatting a chore.

Sad to say, dropping a note to WordPress support brought little more than ‘Sorry, that’s the way it is now, and we aren’t changing. You really should move one and use the Block Editor.’

Even sadder was noting that quite a few users were making the same queries, and getting the same response.

If it’s possible to get sadder still, I just looked in the above post the day after I published it – the sight wasn’t good.

The image of the works entrance was no longer to be seen – since I’m a forgetful idiot and getting old, I’ll concede I may have imagined inserting that old image from my library, or somehow forgotten to save the content (while leaving all the later material in place). That said, I’d like someone to explain THAT latter option to me.

The Lego funny at the end was left aligned on the page. Put simply, I NEVER left align images except on very rare occasion, even right alignment is rare (usually for small images), while centre alignment is my default setting.

It’s really really irritating to find posts have magically changed after you make them, and sad that it’s STILL happening years after it was first noticed.

If you’re wondering, no, I won’t be wasting my time raising this issue with ‘support’ again, ever.

I’d look for another platform, but for the hassle of making the move without losing past content.

I’m not loyal, just trapped.

Cat stickers on a tree

Seriously.

I saw the light mark on the tree from a distance, and went over to see what the mark was.

Whatever I expected to find, little cat pic stickers was the last thing I had in mind.

Had they been a couple of feet (sorry, less than a metre) from the ground, then I would not have been surprised, as some kid might have decided to decorate the tree.

But these were more like six feet (sorry, over two metres) from the ground, so whoever stuck them here was not a ‘tiny person’.

Maybe I just missed the local ‘Crazy Cat Lady’!

I had a look around, but unless I missed any others, this was all that was there – unless any others had been lost to the weather.

Cat Stickers

Unexpected park find

Wandering through one of the local parks recently, I spotted some odd rubbish lying near the edge of a fairly ‘wild’ area, perhaps best described as seldom tended. By ‘rubbish’ I don’t mean the sort of stuff found in your wheelie bin, but greenery and recently cut bits and pieces of plants, bushes, and trees.

Thanks to the time of year, the remaining vegetation was light, and I spotted a path that’s usually overgrown and hidden (unless you already know  it’s there).

Interesting Wear Pattern

Time to follow this, it might be interesting to see what it leads to (previously, nothing worthy of note, just undergrowth).

Interesting Wear Pattern Develops

Well THAT’S different – better carry on and see if there’s more.

Very New New Path Underway

And that’s VERY different. This wasn’t here the last time I dared walk here alone. It was just trampled grass back then.

Somebody has clearly been busy, and is close to being finished too.

New Path Work Area

Major changes here, and clearly a handy spot where the workers have been chopping logs and making the wood chips being laid on the new path.

Previously, this was, for want of a better description a ‘Drinking Den’ and staging post for the local worthies to store stolen wood (which they would probably have described as ‘scrap’ or ‘waste’) when getting ready to build a bonfire nearby on November 5th, for Guy Fawkes night. Their favourite ‘liberation’ seemed to be the For Sale sign added to any houses that were on offer in the nearby streets, which all seem to end up here at the start of November.

Better carry on.

The End Or The Beginning

So this is then the end of this little discovery.

But, since this end of the path is actually nearest the houses (just out of sight in the background), I would personally refer to this spot as the beginning of this new path – in Mount Vernon Park.

 

What do you wire a park for?

Intriguing catch yesterday.

This bloke in hi-vis laying cables in a nearby park.

At the moment, there are no terminal boxes or similar anywhere near where he is laying his cables, and I know the past of this park – it was just ‘spare’ ground until it was landscaped and parkified (yes, I just made up that word), so there’s nothing buried there to be tapped into.

Guess I’ll have to make the effort and get back there a bit more often, and satisfy curiosity.

Interesting Park Wiring Game

For the moment, the only thing I can think of is an extension to the tree lighting found last year, around Christmas.

This lies just to the right of the above area, and I thought they were just seasonal decorations, but they’ve not only remained, they now seem to be lit 24/7 too.

Assuming whoever turned them on has not just forgotten, and ‘Left the lights on’!

Christmassy Park Trees

Update

Some time after taking the pic of the chappie apparently shoving cables into the ground I discovered it wasn’t cable!

The stuff going down into the ground is actually a very heavy walled plastic tubing, with longitudinal ridges, rather than being smooth bore (like pneumatic piping).

So far, this is something I’m not familiar with, so can only guess it might be for later running of electrical or fibre-optic cables, using a no-dig system to avoid excavation work.

Odd shelter found in public park

This was a slightly odd find after I took a different path through one of my local parks.

It’s very like a one man (person?) shelter made from available materials, and only needs a tarp or similar cover over it to make it waterproof. You’d have to bring your own as there’s absolutely nothing natural in our parks to make any sort of sheet out of.

I’ve come across various hides built in forests and by riversides in the past, but there’s no way this could be a hide. It’s possibly not too obvious from the pics, but this in bushes only a few feet from public paths so no wildlife here – apart from the odd squirrel, or rat, or mouse.

Well, being in the east end of Glasgow, maybe it’s just a temporary ‘drinking den’ for some poor henpecked souls from the nearby houses.

While I say that in jest, sort of, there is another smaller park nearby, and the council eventually destroyed it by dumping a load of tree-cutting and logs to block access. I’d explored it before this was done, and it was strewn with empty cans and bottles, and various items of drug paraphernalia.

This thing looks largely like fallen branches in the flat 2D pics, but when seen for real, the thinner twigs and branches were clearly woven into the thicker supporting branches.

Park Shelter