I am walking with Clare, who lives on the street next to mine. I haven’t met her before, but she got in touch after I shared some of my earlier blog posts on the town’s Facebook page, promising to tell me about ‘the ants of Lenzie Moss’. After moving to the town five years ago, just as lockdown kicked in, Clare’s family have spent much of their time on the Moss, cycling and walking, on excursions with nursery and school and, as I will find out, searching for Myrmica. It is an overcast but warm Saturday afternoon when we meet on the corner of Heath Avenue.
Although Clare has a busy job with the NHS, and a rich family life – as I will find out – she is also spending a lot of her time campaigning for Lenzie Public Hall to be brought into community ownership. Since I moved to the town, the building has been vacant and is clearly falling into disrepair. The hall was built in 1892 after the local community raised funds at a bazaar in Glasgow (with a special train carriage provided between the stations at Lenzie and Queen Street). There is a long history of clubs and societies using the venue since then. East Dunbartonshire Council are now deciding its fate. It has been put up for sale or let, and risks being removed from investment plans on the grounds of it being ‘surplus to operational requirements’. For Clare and many others, this is clearly not the case. The hall is seen as a vital community resource with an important place in the town and potential for a sustainable future. Clare has even enlisted her family in the campaign. She shows me a picture of her nine-year-old daughter running an information stall outside the hall. It is good to see that the spirit of the nineteenth century community bazaar is still strong!
As we circle the Moss, I hear all about Clare’s family adventures: getting stuck in the bog; breaking the ice on New Year’s Eve; and deer blocking the path during their bike rides. Clare tells me about volunteering to accompany her children’s primary school classes a couple of times. Apparently, the wee ones tend to go a bit wild, playing, shouting and running around with sticks. On one occasion, they smeared mud on their faces. Clare says it all went ‘a bit Lord of the Flies’. It sounds great! When I walked with Nalini, we explored the Moss as a playground and I learned about some of the places where her children like to swing or hide or climb. For Clare and her family, the entire site is a place for play and exploration. It sounds like they have a lot of fun here.
Clare points out the blaeberry bushes that I also explored with Kay a few weeks ago. She tells me that they are often found growing near birchwood. I ask about the ants and Clare is excited to tell me all about them. Having honed their skills with a Northumbrian colony, her family set out to find a Lenzie queen to rear at home. They had to wait for Flying Ant Day, which depends on the perfect wind and weather conditions for millions of young males and the queens to emerge from their nests and take flight, to mate and start new colonies. The children sought out the bigger females from the hundreds of males that seemed attracted to Clare’s coat – perhaps because of the colour. They then captured a queen in a test tube and took her home to start a new colony. This takes time: they now have only ten worker ants after months of looking after them. But Clare and her family are fascinated by them, and I can see why now I have had such an inspiring introduction to myrmecology.
As we approach the end of the boardwalk, we head into the woodland. We pass through an archway of birchwood and enter a section of the Moss that Clare’s children love to visit. We step over slugs and spot fungi growing on the deadwood. Clare tells me she has seen the bright red cups of the scarlet fairy fungi growing here before. We are now looking at the Moss as a place of magic and imagination. We spot the moss-covered ‘fairy house’ that her daughter recently discovered. After a brief stop at the tree swing where Clare collects some litter, we set off to search for a place that her daughter once visited with her nursery class. She had referred to it as ‘the bottom of a castle’ and I think I might know where she means.
We follow the woodland trail and soon arrive at our intended destination: a concrete base with the ruins of some external walls. There is smashed glass everywhere and we find evidence of a fire. We wonder if it was part of the railway line that used to run around the Moss as part of the commercial peatworks. Clare tells me that the disused alleyway that runs along the back of my garden was originally used for the railway. I hadn’t heard this before, but it makes sense: satellite images show a straight line running from the apex of the triangle of woodland that we are in now, all the way along the land between the houses on Fern Avenue and Hawthorne Avenue. There are remnants of the trainline on this woodland path, and I plan to go searching for more in the nettles and brambles over the wall from my garden.
I can see why the Moss means so much to Clare. Her regular visits with the family are so full of discoveries and new experiences. Although they have only lived in Lenzie for five years, Clare’s family have built a such a strong connection to this town. This connection has been formed through their involvement in the campaign to ensure a better future for the public hall, Clare’s voluntary trips with her children’s school, and all the stories about the family exploring the Moss. It is a connection that I am trying to build for myself and my family as well, partly through these walks. Meeting people like Clare makes me feel that it is possible.
