Ashtree Park and a return trip to Pollok Park

Run time: 30:19

Distance covered: 3.21m (5.17km)

Soundtrack: Alien: Out of the Shadows by Tim Lebbon and Dirk Maggs

Conditions: warm, sunny morning

A return to the south side after a few excursions to the north, and a good opportunity to cover some more of the city's biggest park.

I started off in Ashtree Park, which is another small local square. This one is a bit more down-at-heel than average, with a playpark that looks a little deathtrappy.

The surrounding neighbourhood is a little rough around the edges too - there's a beautiful old Victorian school across the road (visible above) that's been left to rot. Boarded up windows, weeds growing from the roof. In a more fashionable part of town it would be flats or a pub. 

One distinguishing and unexplained feature is a stone monolith, surrounded by randomly strewn shards of graven sandstone. No clue where they're from or what it represents - answers on a postcard. 

I covered Ashtree quickly and ran along Pollokshaws Road to the Haggs Road entrance to Pollok Park. I covered the south of the park back in March, but it's so massive that I could take a different route and barely retrace my steps.

This time I headed around the woodland trails to the north. It was less busy than the trail I took last time which followed the White Cart out towards the motorway. I think I prefer this side of the park - give me solitude and trees over busy river footpaths anytime. I circled back around by Pollok House before coming back out on Pollokshaws Road again and closing the loop at Ashtree.

This was another run that felt pretty tough physically. It just shows how easy it is to get out of shape after just a couple of weeks of not doing it regularly. My pace was way down on my regular runs too, although sometimes that's unavoidable since I'm going into unexplored territory on each of the park runs, and it's less easy to avoid hills.

After finishing up, I decided to follow up a lead on another possible route. Part of this project has involved some detective work, tracking down potential parks that don't appear on the GCC list. There doesn't seem to be rhyme or reason as to why some are included and some aren't. Tiny playparks like Crosshill Park are included, while larger green spaces like Bennan Square and Old Station Park are excluded. There are some parks which might be private or community owned, but the latter two have GCC signs.

I found a useful thread on the Hidden Glasgow forum which attempted to list all of the Glasgow parks. There's lots of debate as to what constitutes a park and whether squares like George Square should be included (I counted it as part of my city centre run - the council calls it a park, even though it's not on their list). I've added a few to my list, like Riccarton, Bennan Square and Sherburn Park - each of them more substantial than many of the parks on the official list.

Anyway, from this forum and a few other sources, I have the names of some 'grey area' parks to investigate. One such name is in the south side, so I detoured to look for it. Albert Park doesn't appear on the map, but if you Google it, it directs you to this green space nestled in a curve of the White Cart, occupied by a cricket and bowling club.

It looks as thought it could have been a public park in the past, and the name suggests it's Victorian, but I couldn't find any information about it.

One thing was pretty clear - the bowling/cricket clubs definitely don't want you to mistake it for a public park today.

So Albert Park is removed from the potential list. No great loss, as the south side is blessed with more parks than anywhere else in town.

Still thirty or so parks to run until I've run them all. Or at least, run them all in theory. The total number of Glasgow parks seems to be an indeterminate number depending on a range of factors...