IMAGES & IDEAS

As a young boy growing up in Glasgow several images and ideas of the city burned themselves indelibly into the back of my brain. One of these was the image of the small conifer plantation (the forest at the end of the world) which could be seen as a tuft of trees from atop the railway bridge at Scotstounhill (looking north up Lincoln Avenue through Knightswood and beyond). I had always been curious to actually find it, be in it, and not just see it from afar. It was only some thirty years later that I finally got round to doing so, when I started roaming the Kilpatricks and Campsies. The 'forest' is called Carneddens Wood and is located on the far eastern edge of the Kilpatrick Hills on Douglas Muir (in the left of the picture here).

Having grown up on the fringes of Knightswood (the old stomping ground of the Knights Templar who used to hunt here when it was all forest), I was privy for some three decades to the passage of the 44 bus whose northern terminus lay in High Knightswood. Yet, living as I did on the fringes of Kightswood it was the southern terminus whose name I had been brainwashed with, for this was the bus I would take to go into the city, the 44 to Eaglesham via Langside. I yearned to place this terminus, to see this mythical land with a name which had already conjured up the image of skyclad eagles cavorting with large hocks of ham.

This hill pictured here is one of several aside the 44 terminus. It is called Dunwan and sits quietly above a small loch at the back of the placid village of Eaglesham. From its brow, looking north, one can see the whole of the city in the distance, and, if you managed to remember your binoculars, you can easily see Knightswood, its hills and towers. Looking in the opposite direction you can see out into the Atlantic. And, if you're really lucky you may even see an eagle or two.