Day 19- Milngavie to Merryton
Proposed distance 49.07km or 30.5miles (or 505,876 Tunnocks Caramel Wafer bars)
Total Ascent 704m (or 586 Scottish Red Deer)
Staying with 20th Glasgow (1st Milngavie) Scout Group
We woke this morning at Auchengillan with a very different view out the windows to when we arrived. The mountains had completely vanished in the clouds and the climbing wall and activity areas were barely visible. It had rained most of the night, but was more of a wet mist as we packed the van. We took the opportunity to thank Claire for the support and headed back to Milngavie.
We were greeted at our start point today by Sandy and Neil from 20th Glasgow (1st Milngavie) who helped us immensely by escorting us to the canal path on a far safer route than we had plotted. Impressively they arranged not only to have a deer wander through one of the estates we were cycling through, but also to stop the rain allowing us a fairly dry day!
We parted with them as we turned off the Forth and Clyde canal, and continued into Glasgow by a very scenic route following national cycle route 754 through beautiful architecture alongside the river Kelvin. Ollie raced a local runner through one of the parks, who kept an incredibly impressive pace and (because we made him wait for the rest of the group to catch up) she narrowly beat him! We then moved to route 75 and headed alongside the Clyde through Glasgow, stopping at a lovely picnic spot adjacent to Merchant City.
The afternoon was spent meandering along route 75 and then route 74, with occasional busy roads and some tricky climbs that caused small legs quite some stress! For any cyclists (Dan) we even had a short section on pavé to keep us entertained at one point! Ultimately the final ascent was too much for the youngest pair, but ever determined to complete the day, Ollie and Jennie walked up the final steep section whilst Bethan and Phil powered on up the road.
We spent the evening with Sandy and some of the team at the 20th swapping stories, doing a spot of bouldering and playing Jenga whilst refuelling ready for tomorrow- sadly our penultimate day in Scotland!
