Running the Parks

Run time : 43:36 Distance covered : 4.71m (7.58km) Soundtrack : 13 Minutes to the Moon podcast Conditions : sunny A loop around from the east to south of the river, finishing up with a home stretch along the Clyde for this one. Dunn Street (Bridgeton) Park is one of those that would be easy to miss as you wander past. It feels like one of the newer parks, small and functional with a community centre and a playpark. The only idiosyncratic feature is the circle of iron girders. A group of teenagers were gathering like  non-socially distant druids.  Across the river to Richmond Park , or more accurately, about a third of it. It's being redeveloped just now so has been divided by 8-foot wooden hoardings. I've never been inside the park before, so I have no idea what was behind the hoardings, or what's going to be in the future. I'll have to come back and check out parks like this and Sandyhills Park in Shettleston to see wh...

Run time : 49:00 Distance covered : 5.11m (8.22km) Soundtrack : Orphan X , Gregg Hurwitz Conditions : warm, cloudy, after the rain The west end is a nice place to run in all conditions. Even on an overcast, rainy day, there's so much green that everything is still pretty and slightly mysterious. In fact this is one of those runs where the streets are nicer than many of the parks. There are loads of small parks dotted around, even when you don't count the private gardens. That means it's possible to cover a lot of them in one go, which is what I decided to do. I started to the north and west, at Naseby Park in Broomhill. Like most of these parks, it's a small green square amidst the houses all around and you can see all there is to see in a few minutes. Some nice trees, playpark, people reading on benches. From there, I headed south to Cross Park , which used to be the grounds of a mansion owned by wine merchant William Lan...

Run time : 1:03:37 Distance covered : 6.68m (5.60km) Soundtrack : Orphan X , Gregg Hurwitz Conditions : warm and cloudy I know some parts of Glasgow like the back of my hand. Pollok, Crookston and the surrounding areas are not included in that. I'm not sure why I've so rarely ventured into the south-western suburbs, but my lack of familiarity for the area led to me missing one of the parks I'd intended to hit, running a couple of miles out of my way, and accidentally doing a 10k. It's got a really different feel from the rest of the city. Instead of sandstone villas and tenements and orderly street layouts, it's bungalows and dual carriageways and meandering diversions. In places it feels almost more like a new town. That's probably because it was built around the post-war period as the new towns, and had some of the same goals, to take overspill from the city. Anyway, I'd planned to start at Househill Park , then run down to Lochar P...