Cuningar Loop and Helenslea Park

Run time: 33:20
Distance covered: 3.5 miles (5.63km)
Soundtrack: Art of the Score podcast 
Conditions: sunny and warm


A tale of two very different parks on this run.

I started out from the big Tesco Extra in Farme Cross, combining daily exercise with weekly shop. From the Tesco car park, it's a short distance to the first park, Cuningar Loop Woodland Park.

This is one of the newest parks on the list, having been established as one of 13 Commonwealth Woods as part of the legacy of the 2014 Games. The site is on a meander in the Clyde (which I'd never thought of as a noun before, but of course it is). A long curve that I've traversed on the opposite bank by bicycle before. The twistiness of the river in this section adds about three miles from the route from Cambuslang into the city centre, compared with using surface roads. The land is the site of one of the city's old reservoirs, when Glasgow got its drinking water mainly from the Clyde.

It's a nice park, as you would expect given the amount of money thrown at it. It starts off well with one of my favourite pieces of public art in the area, a metal arch that seems to turn to dust at the top, like it's in the process of being dissolved by Thanos.



There are good facilities for kids to play: sandpits and climbing walls and a zip line and so on. I avoided the busy areas and looped around by the bike trails and then riverside boardwalk, then across the bridge.







This took me over the Clyde and into Dalmarnock. I worked in this very area about fifteen years ago, but it's unrecognisable. The dilapidated old tenement building I worked in and its neighbouring buildings have been flattened, and even the streets themselves have been erased from existence. In their place stands housing from the Commonwealth village, now a mix of social and privately owned housing. It certainly has a much less depressed feel about it than when I worked there, although I have to admit my memories of Old Dalmarnock are tainted by working for the worst boss I've ever had. Whenever I've had a bad day at any job I've held since then, I can think back to those days and shrug and think things could be worse.

So the streets are now named after Olympic and Commonwealth cities, London and Manchester and Melbourne. I ran along them and up onto London Road (not Olympic related, it's always been London Road). This brought me a couple of minutes later to Helenslea Park.

Now, as is becoming clear, some Glasgow parks are beautifully maintained havens of green space. Some are neglected and overgrown mysteries to explore  Some, quite frankly, are kind of a dump. Helenslea is the latter.








I did a quick loop, marvelling that every cliché on the neglected urban park checklist was ticked off: the broken bottles, the dog shit, the remains of fires, the discarded mattress, the shopping trolley. I guess it was never one of the city's best parks, but it could be a nice enough place with a little TLC.

I turned back and ran along London Road again, passing some topical flyposting on the hoarding outside the site of an old pub.


Then I headed back down past the Emirates Stadium and back over the bridge to finish where I started, at Cuningar Loop. A good run, and an opportunity for me to visit a place that doesn't exist anymore.


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