Day 13 – not the prettiest

Central Glasgow to Hamilton. 24.7 miles, 1,355 ft of elevation, 47,776 steps

Thank you Tommy for joining me on what was meant to be a gentle if unexciting walk but ended up being wet, frustratingly long and with a central theme of litter. I also never allowed you a stop for lunch and for that I again apologise.

The plan was a simple one – to meet on the banks of the River Clyde and follow it out of Glasgow onwards to Hamilton. I will continue along the river tomorrow to Lanark.

We were not expecting rural idle and so got what we were expecting. Rubbish (often nicely collected in plastic bags), housing developments, some rather unnecessary ‘no fishing signs’ and evidence of the Scottish obsession with Irn Bru.

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At one point we veered off the rivers edge and walked about a mile along a road. We played ‘count the number of Irn Bru cans lobbed in the verge’. We lost count at 50 before we were half way along the road. We concluded that it must be part of the ritual and high on sugar you just have to chuck the evidence as hard as you can out of the window.

Excitement over, we went through a lovely section of woods with a number of dog walkers struggling with too many yappy dogs and saw lots of little bits of wood nailed to numerous trees. One of the dog walkers told us that it was a local chap who started to put up doors for the tree faries and all the children joined in. There were loads of them but our favourite was the below:

Then it rained. Hard. And this is when the walk lost its adventure and became frustrating. I took Tom through a swamp and then tried to navigate over the M74. The previously well marked ‘Clyde walkway’ decided to give up, we hacked our way along the side of the motorway only to have to turn back and walk the most convoluted route over the motorway almost teasing the walker ‘how dare young choose this ridiculous choice of motion when we have the fast, noisy motorcar. You shall walk an unnecessary mile as we force you over and under this lovely conveyor belt of noise and pollution’. (can you tell it annoyed me).

So after this stupid diversion we then came to the Strathclyde Country Park, and the commonwealth ‘rowing dory’. It seemed endless and we had great fun critiquing Mark Duntan’s stupid sport for the additional 2 Miles’s this took us.

Finally we arrived at the beautiful OYO hotel. A quick beer with Tom, a shower and now the curry. A great, tiring day. It must get prettier again from here……

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One quick shout out to the Newton arms in Newton. A scary, rough looking pub that gave us free tea and biscuits whilst listening to 1980’s hits and admiring the decor. (I dare you to look it up on trip advisor – they were lovely).