Large cities offer many walking routes but of course the pool diminishes as you progress. I purchased a self-published e-book a while back that outlined a selection of Glasgow wanders, but found I had already done most of them, or close variations thereof. One diamond shone brightly in the rough - the Drumchapel Way. This 4.5-mile circuit skirts a housing estate on the edge of the city and offers extensive woodland and parkland sections. There is a handy rail connection from Glasgow Queen Street and I duly filed the outing on the to-do list.
I eventually tackled the route when on the lookout for an inexpensive day-trip during my Easter break. I took the bus to Glasgow and walked the short distance to Queen Street Station, now extensively remodelled. The rather depressing 1960s architecture has been replaced by a modern glass frontage and spacious interior concourse as part of a £120 million project. My train out to Drumchapel was due to depart from a low-level platform and I descended to the subterranean part of the station. The journey initially began inside a lengthy tunnel but I was soon spotting city landmarks and enjoying views of the River Clyde. I alighted at Drumchapel and walked a few hundred yards to the shopping centre, the official start point of my walk. Social scientists could no doubt make a few interesting observations in this deprived far corner of Glasgow. A vape shop took pride of place in the concrete precinct and the queue at Greggs Bakery spilled out on to the pavement. I crossed the road and took a photo of the information panel displaying the route map. I had read the marker posts were haphazard within the urban stretch and I was directed to pass two tower blocks and follow the edge of a public park. I crunched along a tarmac path covered by a carpet of broken glass before switching to a grassy trail. New low-rise housing stood nearby and I would encounter plenty of empty space within the scheme, suggesting that some demolition had been carried out over the years. I walked by the Donald Dewar Sports Centre, named after the Glasgow native who became the inaugural First Minister of Scotland following the re-establishment of the parliament in 1999. After just one year in office, Dewar suffered a brain haemorrhage and died the following day.
Originally a rural location within the County of Dumbarton, Drumchapel was transformed beyond recognition in the 1950s when civil administration was transferred to Glasgow Corporation and a large housing estate erected. The development was intended to accommodate 35,000 people and formed part of the overspill policy which entailed slum clearance in the heart of the city. On the surface, it must have been a easy sell. To move from an overcrowded and run-down tenement block where four households shared one external lavatory, to a modern spacious home with a private bathroom would have represented a big advancement in living standards. It made sense on the bricks and mortar side, but the mass building programme failed to replicate the sense of community. The amenities proved woefully inadequate and anti-social behaviour soon abounded. The terminal decline of Glasgow's traditional heavy industries would not have helped matters. The current population of Drumchapel is less than half of what was originally envisaged but on a positive note, great efforts have been made to regenerate the area over the last quarter of a century. It certainly wasn't a threatening place and the path swung away from the estate to enter Garscadden Wood. On the other side of the trees lay the affluent district of Bearsden - the very definition of leafy suburbs.
The path began to climb and I could see across the whole of Drumchapel and into the rural territory and shallow hills beyond. I was right at the city limits and I observed a couple of squirrels before encountering two deer chewing on green vegetation. I slowly reached for my camera and managed to reel off a few nice shots before they scarpered. I continued my arboreal ascent but the presence of discarded alcohol containers reminded me I wasn't fully out in the sticks. Thankfully, some of the detritus had been bagged up, awaiting collection. Planes passed regularly overhead en route to Glasgow Airport, near Paisley. I gradually dropped back down to street level and the trail skirted the foot of a small mound topped by an enormous water tank. The futuristic concrete tower resembles an invading spacecraft from War of the Worlds and is supplied by the Loch Katrine reservoir in the Trossachs. It delivers a steady pressurised output to the Drumchapel households and is a prominent local landmark. I re-emerged in residential territory and passed a brand new allotment site. As I worked my way back to the shopping centre, I tried to make sense of the enormous quantities of litter that blighted the area. Every vacant piece of land was strewn with cans and bottles of all descriptions, along with an assortment of other waste. Hedges and bushes sagged under the amount of trash lobbed into them. It was disappointing to see, given the numerous obvious efforts being made throughout the area to improve its appearance. Apparently littering is very closely linked to social deprivation. You would need an army of volunteers to clean up the mess here. I wandered back down to the railway station. It had been an interesting walk through a less salubrious part of Glasgow, but one with its own distinct character.
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