Househill and Rosshall Parks. And getting lost.

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 Park, then along to Rosshall Park and close the loop, which should have been around five miles by Google. It goes without saying I've never visited any of these parks before. One of these days I'll need to work out the percentage of parks I had visited before this project - if it's more than 25%, I'll be shocked.

Househill Park was unusual; unlike the grand Victorian parks or the more modern parks. It's essentially a long strip of land between the B762 dual carriageway and the Levern Water.

It's a nice flat run, not an unattractive place, but you would get pretty bored of running it every day.

I covered the park from one end to the other, then emerged out onto the dual carriageway Barrhead Road. I had tried to map out the next steps ahead of time, but took the wrong exit at the roundabout near the Silverburn shopping centre, which took me away from my next intended destination of Lochar Park - I'll get it another time.

There were enough signs for cyclists and pedestrians to work out I was still on track for Rosshall Park, and it was shaping up to be a long run anyway, so I decided to keep going rather than backtrack.

Technically a new(ish) park, but it had the feel of the grounds of a grand country house. When I got home I Google it and discovered that's because it is. 

It was the formerly the gardens of a mansion owned by the Ross family, and was purchased by the city and opened to the public in the 60s. This is one of those hidden gems with beautiful trees and winding river paths.

Some of the wooded paths reminded me a little of California with the way the light filtered through to the almost-completely empty paths. It's crazy to think of the people crowding into the big parks like Kelvingrove, Pollok, Victoria, Queens and so on, when you can find places just as pleasant with maybe a tenth of the people. That's a selling point for me anytime, not just during The Time of Covid.

So far, so good. This is where it went wrong. I lost my bearings leaving Rosshall Park and turned right instead of left, and ran a couple of miles toward Hillington before I worked out my mistake. Still, I got a congratulations message from Strava...