Rudy's Railway Walks

Kilmaurs is a small East Ayrshire town just to the north west of Kilmarnock. It has a signposted "Town Trail" that is much more rural than it's name suggests. So much so that it goes through a cow field or two. For our visit Rudy stuck to a run ar

Invergowrie southbound platform has a gate that opens right into woodland on the Firth of Tay. There's not much here except some reed beds, a couple old boat sheds and plenty peace and quiet to sit and enjoy a picnic looking out across the mud fla

Drem is a very small village in East Lothian with a population of less than 100 in the 2001 Census. It's Wikipedia article currently starts with a photo captioned "Old farm buildings and cottages brought back to life as expensive houses." For me a

Along the road from the station, down a street and behind some houses, Merryton Braes isn't really an "official" place as such. Just an area of woodland stuck on a steep riverbank between houses and the Avon Water that developers can't build & profit

Sometimes walks just don't happen. Revisiting Shettleston I had thought to go back up the hill to Greenfield Park but no. When we stepped off the train there was an alarm sounding in a nearby building, there was construction work going on, and mos

There used to be a branch line from Bellshill to the Bellshill Colliery Pit No 3. Well guess where we went for our walk when visiting the station?! A run around and exploring old overgrown industrial wasteland is always a favourite of ours.

After a run around on Glasgow Green we walked back to Queen Street via a few of the East End's well known landmarks. An empty event notice board and the closed for renovation People's Palace. Lucky Rudy was just here to run around the grass la

Glasgow Green to Dalmarnock Picking up where we left off last time at the Glasgow University Boathouse this section of the River Clyde Walkway meanders through the east of the city but like much of the Clyde it doesn't interact with the urb

When we visited the Cuningar Loop Woodland Park in March 2019 it was so nice I promised myself to come back for another walk around. Six Years Later I'm glad to say it's just as nice. There's a new addition of a viewing platform th

When I planned this walk it was going to be a quick twenty minutes along a cycle path between two railway stations good for a rainy day. It had been saved as that idea for a long time! Since the planning, what was inaccessible "wasteland" fields next

A Saturday afternoon in December meant town was very busy when we arrived at Central Station. Everyone else was here for shopping though and our River Clyde walk was quieter than we expected for any weekend. We stopped past the Clyde Tidal Weir fo

Rudy has been to Ardrossan Beach a few times now and we know it's a great beach for dogs to run around. Wanting to stretch his legs a bit we chose to visit the beach again on a chilly but dry December afternoon. We chose the walk while it was dry b

The Luggie Water runs about 11 miles through North Lanarkshire and East Dunbartonshire until it meets the River Kelvin at Kirkintilloch. We walked a short section of the river near Greenfaulds in Cumbernauld. We were pleasantly surprised to find

Gartcosh Nature Reserve is just over ten minutes walk from Gartcosh. It was established in 2007 to protect the largest Scottish colony of great crested newts from nearby development. This was the site of Gartcosh Steel Works (founded in 1865 as Wo

Stane Gardens in Shotts is a fairly new community green space less than ten minutes walk from Shotts. Historically the site was home to the Shotts Iron Works—an iron and brass foundry dating from 1801. It has since undergone extensive clean-up

The Greenock Cut can't be done justice in this small selection of photos. Situated in the Clydemuirshiel park this aqueduct fed water to Greenock's industry and included automatic sluice gates worked by counterweights and buckets with holes in them!

Hillend Loch was created to feed water into the Monklands Canal and was the largest man-made reservoir in the world when the dam was built at the end of the 1790s. It's still important to Scottish Canals as a source of water albeit now for the Forth

Some days just don't work out. We'd caught a bus to Dawsholm Park but Rudy made clear he wasn't in the mood for chasing squirrel scents around the woods there - the alternative was a wee circular trip on trains into the City Centre and back. Tha

An afternoon walk at Newtonmore train station.

Dalwhinnie is a traditional starting point for Munro Baggers heading to Ben Alder. The walking route was via a level crossing near the station but that was closed in 2021 due to safety concerns - the alternate route is an extra twenty minutes walk al