Running the Parks

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 o...

Run time : 40 or 50 minutes on and off? Distance covered : about 4 miles Soundtrack : Two Crime Writers and a Microphone podcast Conditions : overcast but warm No proper stats for this one as Strava glitched, but it doesn't matter too much as I'll need to come back to this park to cover more of it. It's massive, so massive in fact that I got lost and came out an entrance a mile away from where I parked. Pollok Park is one of those places I hadn't been in years, and couldn't remember anything about, but when I got there it was like a whole section of childhood memories became unarchived. I remember the house. My parents took me to the park as a kid, and I would ask about the next time we would be going to "Pok House". It's easily the biggest of the Glasgow parks, and was names Britain's best park in 2007. The Wikipedia page is naturally more fleshed out than those for the other parks. Originally part of the Old Pollok Estate, and the...