Since Clyde joined my family, I have been out on the Moss most days and have become a part of the disparate community of dog walkers that repeatedly follows its paths. My neighbour-across-the-street, Ann, and her 14-year-old dog, Sophie, are among my most regular encounters. I met Ann in my pre-dog-owning days, shortly after I moved to the street in 2023. But we hadn’t chatted properly and our exchanges were brief. Now that I am out walking my dog on the Moss early most mornings, in all sorts of weather, Ann and I have spoken for longer and more often. Usually, we talk about our pets and their various escapades, but when I told Ann about this project, she kindly offered to join me for a walk.

The dogs are staying at home today and we set off on a cold and overcast afternoon to the sound of a robin singing its heart out. Ann has lived in Lenzie for over 50 years and says she is the longest resident of the street. She started exploring the Moss when it was overgrown and mostly inaccessible for her children’s prams, and now she is out here with her dog (and occasionally also her son’s, who lives on the next street) very often – usually twice a day and regularly timed to avoid the school traffic. Ann doesn’t tend to walk all the way round now as it is too far for Sophie. I actually saw them earlier today when I walked with Clyde. Poor Sophie was limping a little, with what the vet later confirmed as an abscess on her paw. Ann also has a 20-year-old cat at home, who no longer ventures outside.

My seven months of dog walking have introduced me to a new kind of connection to this place and to the people who frequent it. I have realised that some people – like Ann – are delighted to see energetic puppies bouncing up to them to say hello. Often, dogs run around the paths off their lead and excitedly chase each other when they meet. Ann says that lots of people, and also dogs, know her well now. In conditions like this, she wears a weather and muddy paw resistant coat, which has dog treats secreted in its deep pockets. Dog walking brings warm smiles of recognition and enthusiastic greetings. Conversely, others are bothered by the unwanted attention and sometimes there are nervous, old or aggressive dogs that have to be avoided.

We pass the grassland by Heather drive and Ann says she is concerned about the pools here, which could be dangerous for children and small dogs. As I saw when I walked with James L, there have been additional ponds dug in key locations around the site. Ann is not convinced about these and wonders what they are meant for. She has been walking here for decades and remembers a time when the mire was left to its own devices. She questions the necessity of the more recent flurry of fences, barriers, banks and ditches. Since the site was designated as a Local Nature Reserve and access was increased with new paths and the board walk, the added footfall perhaps makes more management inevitable, but through these walks, I now understand some of the reasons why the conservation work has not always been well received.

Ann has a lot of memories of this place. She tells me about an occasion when her son and his primary school friend went off to play on the Moss. When the agreed 5pm dinner time passed, Ann set off to find them and came across their abandoned bikes. She says she was never worried and soon found them hanging out up a tree, oblivious to the time. Ann recalls other times when she has had close encounters with the bog. She remembers a walk to the far side of the Moss many years ago, during which her husband momentarily lost a welly; and another when she stepped onto a grassy bank and found that it was far less stable than it appeared.

I tell Ann about one of my very first visits to the Moss, when I made a similar mistake. I remember it vividly. Thinking I would be able to hop between stable clods of earth, I brought my foot down to test the stability of a tuft of grass. My boot passed through the surface like a stone into water, and I immediately lost my footing. Losing my balance, my right leg swung instinctively forward to brace for the impact and it, too, sunk into the mud without resistance. I managed to quickly turn my full body and lifted my right leg up and out of the ground again. I ended up on all fours, covered in mud with my heart racing. Ann and I remember the feeling of embarrassment and the hard-earned lesson that this place can be treacherous for those who underestimate it.

We pass the old benches in the south woods path – one broken and the other removed. Ann says that the missing bench used to have a plaque in memory of a regular Moss visitor, David Lee. When I walked with Paul, I learnt that the newer benches were paid for with a bequest left by David. Ann remembers him and says that he used to enthusiastically predict the next train to pass, sharing his knowledge about the engine and the carriages. On cue, a train passes by on its way to Glasgow. Ann tells me that her father was a railway policeman and inspector, and that her childhood in Fife was enhanced by free first-class travel around the country and beyond.

As we arrive back on our street, Ann tells me about my house. Like Steve, she also remembers the wedding that took place in our garden. She also mentions an old stable block at the back of the property. The large pile of bricks in the corner of my garden is all that is left of this now. Ann also backs Clare’s theory that the corridor of land beyond was originally where the railway line transported cut peat from the bog to the town. My upstairs neighbour told me that they have seen the deer using this land as a passageway behind the gardens.

My walk with Ann has taught me about the ways in which the Moss has changed over the last decades. It is a marvellous thing: to have a long connection to a place and to have lived in the same area for so long. As a new member of this community, I am grateful to have learned more about what was here before me. Today’s walk and conversation have made me feel more connected to these memories and histories, and I am now creating my own. Perhaps I will still be living here in 50 years, still walking around the Moss.

Jan 23, 2026

The first place you ever knew was warm and wild and wet
And in that dark womb you grew
We are all bog born.
(Karine Polwart, ‘We are all bog born’)

It has rained heavily overnight but this morning the sun is shining brightly through the clouds and the whole place sparkles. It feels like a good day for my second chance to walk with Ruby. She should have been the 19th walker to circle the Moss with me, but as I confessed to Ellie, who took that place instead, I missed my appointment earlier that morning. This cost Ruby a wasted trip all the way from her home near the Pentlands, just south of Edinburgh. Graciously, Ruby has returned today, and I couldn’t be more thankful. I meet her by her car at the far end of the station carpark. As we set off, I notice that a fairy door has appeared in a birch tree.

This isn’t quite Ruby’s first visit to Lenzie Moss, then. When she made the trip to meet me back in October, having realised that I wasn’t going to show up, she ventured some way onto the Moss. This will be her first full circle though. One major difference from three months ago is the birdsong that we encounter. Today, there are robins, great and blue tits, jackdaws, dunnocks and goldfinches soundtracking our walk. It feels like a spring morning, although we are still in the middle of winter.

Ruby recently returned to higher education after a decade working for NGOs, first in human rights and aid, and more recently in climate. She continues to work as a fundraiser for Friends of the Earth Scotland, but is now in the final stage of her MSc in Environment, Culture and Society at the University of Edinburgh. Ruby tells me of a recent fieldtrip with her class to Fala Moor in Midlothian, where they met the Scottish folk artist Karine Polwart. They explored soundscapes and field recordings and responded creatively to the bog.

I have seen Karine Polwart perform as part of the Spell Songs ensemble, a musical response to Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris’s book, The Lost Words, which conjures up ‘acrostic spell-poems’ by Macfarlane, illustrated by Morris. These poems are a way of rescuing words about the natural world, which are slowly disappearing from our children’s vocabularies. I have a print of Morris’ goldfinches on my bedroom wall and their gilded flight is the first thing I see each day. The spell songs are like stepping through an enchanted portal into the world that was already around us.

Ruby tells me that she has had a tough week in her studies. Her coursemates are at the stage of pitching and refining their dissertation projects and Ruby has experienced something of an awakening to the scale and scope of research that is achievable. She is having to redesign her project and let go of some of the aspirations and ideas that had made it feel exciting. Ruby understands that this is part of the process and recognises that her master’s dissertation is the start of something that she can continue to develop in other places and contexts. But nevertheless, it is a difficult moment. Ruby values the opportunity to explore Lenzie Moss today and says ‘it will help me get out of my head’. A flock of pink-footed geese arches overhead.

Ruby has always had a strong connection to landscapes and environments. She grew up in Ecuador, moving to Speyside in Scotland at the age of ten. Her father was a geologist in the Ecuadorian mining industry. Ruby learned to snorkel when she was two and has always felt drawn to watery worlds. She says that all her formative memories are bound up in the places she has lived. At the same time, Ruby is concerned with extractive relationships with places. There is a clear connection between her childhood experiences and the work she is now doing.

All these concerns have informed Ruby’s research plans. She has been inspired by the More-Than-Human Life (MOTH) Program, the ‘interdisciplinary initiative advancing rights and well-being for humans, nonhumans, and the web of life that sustains us all’. The MOTH Program is informed by Ecuador’s pioneering rights of nature legal framework – especially the landmark 2021 Constitutional Court ruling that established legal rights for the Los Cedros cloud forest. They have also contributed to collaborative projects with Ecuadorian Indigenous communities, such as the Sarayaku people of the Amazon, whose activism has been central to these new laws. One of the key members of the collective is Robert Macfarlane, whose latest book, Is a River Alive? asks whether a rivers are living entities, which should be recognised as such, legally and imaginatively.

Ruby’s connections with this collective have led her to seek out other examples of rights of nature projects, such as the Embassy of the North Sea, an initiative based in the Netherlands that aims to listen to and act on behalf of the sea. Their mission statement is ‘to emancipate the North Sea in all its diversity as a fully fledged political player, via collectives of humans and non-humans’. Ruby has been inspired by the activism and creativity of organisations such as this. She now wants to explore the possibility of such a project in Scottish waters. Could the seabed have legal rights? Could human and more-than-human communities work together to protect the environment? How could we build sustainable futures for all? These are big questions and I now understand how Ruby’s plans for a masters dissertation may have been too ambitious.

As we walk, Ruby collects litter. I notice her almost unconsciously picking up a coffee cup lid and a crisp packet. When I ask her about this, she says that she does it all the time. She recently purchased a grabber stick, which she uses to tidy the woodland area behind her flat. Ruby says that removing litter is a way of caring for the land, which for her is vital. I tell her about Kyriaki’s artistic practice and recall retrieving a discarded drinks can from the Moss, which she planned to use in an artwork. I wonder what became of that found aluminium – whether it was melted down and recast.

As we complete our circle, we spend some time balancing on the foundations of the old peat plant. Ruby says this is what she would have done as a child. She notes the mature birch trees that are growing from the centre of the building. They have the right to do that, I think. And thanks to the work of Macfarlane and others, we now have the language to assert that right. I recall some other words that Karine Polwart sang:

Enter the wild with care, my love, and speak the things you see
Let new names take and root and thrive and grow.
(Spell Songs ensemble, ‘Lost Words Blessing’)

Jan 17, 2026

For the first walk of 2026, I am joined by Eddie, an engagement officer at Archaeology Scotland. Eddie is preparing to lead some fieldtrips at Lenzie Moss with pupils at the local secondary school, Lenzie Academy. He has studied maps of the area, searched the archives, and planned locations for augering (a method of core sampling, similar to the coring method that Phil G told me about). But this is Eddie’s first visit to the site. It is a valuable opportunity for him to plan the visits for later in the year, when the weather will hopefully be more agreeable than this cold, wet day.

Eddie is working on a large-scale project known as the Clyde Valley Archaeological Research Framework (CVARF). Eddie’s job is to work with the local authorities in the Clyde River catchment to ensure public engagement with the project. Lenzie is part of East Dunbartonshire, but there will also be workshops and fieldtrips exploring the archaeology of the Clyde in East Renfrewshire, Glasgow City, Inverclyde, North Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, South Lanarkshire and West Dunbartonshire. Together, over a third of Scotland’s population live in these areas.

As we walk from the station up Bea’s Path, Eddie tells me what he has discovered so far. He mentions the Roy Military Survey of Scotland, an extensive survey of Scotland’s landscape between 1747-1755. A hundred years or so before the modern Lenzie was built, it is possible to see that the bog reached further and connected with other wetland areas. The trainline was constructed in the 1830s and 40s, cutting through the landscape and soon bringing further building (including my house on the new Fern Avenue some time around 1870, when Jane Vary Campbell and David Sinclair Campbell may have been the first occupants). Lenzie Moss became demarcated, boxed in, and separated.

Eddie will share this mapping exercise with S3 pupils – fourteen- and fifteen-year-old’s in their third year of Scottish secondary education. Prior to their fieldtrip to the Moss, they will also learn about some of the things that have been found in local bogs. These include the Cambusnethan bog body, found in North Lanarkshire in 1932, and initially believed to be a 17th-century Presbyterian Covenanter; and the Peelhill horde, the discovery of Late Bronze Age weapons at a site in South Lanarkshire in 1961, which were most likely buried ritualistically after a battle. While the bog body may in fact have been a murder victim, who died some years later than originally thought, both cases raise questions about the ways that bogs have been used throughout history as spaces of transition, between life and death, our world and the next.

I tell Eddie what I know about a gruesome discovery on Lenzie Moss, recounted in Bill Black’s excellent history of ‘Peat Extraction on Lenzie Moss’:

[Colin Graham] was on the moss about 400 yards west of Moncrieff Avenue on Wednesday [7th] July 1880. He had dug down about 4 feet when, suddenly, he exposed a human head, partially preserved, including the hair. When it was extracted it was identified as that of a female but further exploration around the area by the police failed to produce the remainder of the body. The victim was never identified, although it was suggested it might be that of a domestic servant, employed some years earlier by Mr Lang at Gallowhill House. She had disappeared without explanation, a fact confirmed by Lang, but in circumstances that were described as ‘suspicious.’

I imagine myself in the position of a teenager learning all this and then being invited to explore the local peatland. Perhaps they will hope to make a discovery of their own, whether grisly or golden.

When Eddie and the school groups extract samples from this site, they will look at the different layers and see how the differences in the peat indicate how long the bog has been forming, whether accumulation has slowed due to drainage and extraction, and how the site has been used for fuel, grazing, or industrial use. They will consider the different proxies that can be measured, such as Phil’s pollen analysis and Meike’s data on elemental composition. Eddie has a real passion for ‘weird watery places’ like this, and I can see how this enthusiasm makes him the ideal person to inspire young people about our local peatlands. Eddie reminds me that Lenzie Moss is a tiny fragment of what was once a wide-reaching area of lowland bogs.

We head onto the bog path and walk a short way into the centre of the Moss. Eddie tells me about the survey he is currently undertaking of Rannoch Moor in the Scottish Highlands. He spends days poring over satellite images of the site, identifying evidence of different activities and infrastructure, such as grazing, sheilings, and charcoal burning platforms. Eddie wants to counter the idea that places like this are ‘wicked wild wastes’, by developing archaeological narratives about moors and bogs. Rannoch Moor has been mentioned a few times on these walks. Like Michael, I think of Lenzie Moss as a miniature landscape that recalls the vast expanse of Rannoch. Despite the difference in scale, both places have complex histories of use and inhabitation.

We reach the southeast woodland and make our way through the trees to the ruins. I’m sure that Eddie will have some thoughts about the old buildings. I have always assumed that the concrete platform that I have explored with Meike and others, was part of the light railway that was used for the peat extraction industry. Eddie agrees that this is likely and says it would be easy to confirm that by checking the plans for the site. While he is careful to frame his response as purely speculative, Eddie offers an alternative theory. He tells me that during the Second World War, a number of fake townships were created by positioning lights in rural areas away from major urban centres, in an effort to trick the Luftwaffe into wasting their bombs. Whenever large concrete platforms are located in places like this, that is always a possibility. Alternatively, as the Moss was an important location for fuel and close to the railway line, this could be the base of a barrage balloon, the gas-filled deterrents of low-flying aircraft, which could be brought down by the steel cabling tethering them to their concrete bases. While these theories might not be accurate in this case, I will now be on the search for such structures on future walks.

We exit the Moss into the station carpark and pass the Nature Reserve notice board, with the Friends of Lenzie Moss map of the site. After walking through history with Eddie, I am reminded that the current layout is only a snapshot in time. Bogs are often thought of archives of past events, whose traces are preserved for generations. Pollen, metals, artefacts and the dead are buried deep in the ground and are later discovered by farmers, peat extractors and archaeologists. But bogs have futures too. If we can teach young people about them now, then there will be people to care about them, visit them and stay close to them as they change along with the next generation.

Jan 16, 2026

It is the last day of the year, and I am walking with four-year-old Minnie and her mum, Jenni. Jenni and I were in the same tutorial group when we started university in 2000, and we have stayed close friends ever since. We have been in each other’s lives for quarter of a century now, which is both amazing and alarming. We are all spending Hogmanay with James and Annabel and their family in Bishopbriggs, but there is just enough time for a walk round the Moss before the festivities begin.

We would have had longer, but shortly after Minnie and Jenni left their home in Galashiels in the Scottish Borders, their car broke down. Thankfully, after the AA and Jenni’s mum came to the rescue, they made it to Lenzie shortly before sunset. We set off quickly, keen to complete our circle while we can still see the paths. Minnie loves being outside and she is full of energy and excitement, which seems only to have increased after four hours in the car (much of which was spent happily watching films on her mum’s phone).

As we walk up Bea’s Path, Minnie sets the pace. She alternates between slow motion and hyperspeed, as only a preschooler can. I am called to action, ‘Come on, Uncle Dave!’ While 95% of people in my life now call me David, there is a small proportion of my oldest friends, who have resolutely stuck with Dave. These people indoctrinate their children so that I will never be fully free of my diminutive past.

I teach Minnie Ruairidh’s ‘Moss animal game’ and she enjoys picking out the imposters from our sets of bog inhabitants: a fox, a hedgehog and a giraffe; a pigeon, a hippopotamus and a deer. We don’t see the latter today, but there are plenty of pigeons nesting in the bare branches, which Minnie is keen for me to photograph. Minnie stops to crunch the ice with her wellies.

Next week, Minnie will start full time at nursery, where she will spend two full days of each week outside. I tell Jenni how much Iona got out of her time at an outdoor nursery, and I remember my recent chat with Brian about the Residential Outdoor Education Bill. As a primary head teacher, Jenni is well versed in the shifts and turns of Scottish education policy. It has been interesting to discover that there are connections in our work on interdisciplinary learning and teaching.

Minnie wants to race, so I sprint alongside her on the north woods path, maintaining a strategic second place. The race evolves and Jenni joins in too. We hop, jump and skip along. Each time we pass a bench, Minnie demonstrates her gymnastic skills and uses them as balance beams. We pass the bin by Heather Drive, which is overflowing with coffee cups and dog poo bags. The service has paused for the holiday, which highlights how regularly this site needs to be cleared, and how well-looked after it usually is. Minnie asks me why I am photographing a bin.

Minnie picks moor-grass and pokes me with it. I retaliate and we battle with grass swords. In the final moments of daylight, an otherworldly atmosphere descends on the Moss. The moon shines brightly above the mire and shadows move in amongst the trees. Minnie picks up on this and says she is scared, but an encouraging word from her mum soon sets her mind at ease. We watch the lights appear on the urban horizon to the west and we look out across the heather, and I think how ideal the conditions would be for a sighting of the ghostly lights of a will-o’-the-wisp, dancing across the bog.

And then, Minnie falls over. I am leading the way along the muddy path, and I miss the moment it happens. When I turn back, she is being lifted out of a puddle, and her hands and knees are covered in black muck. Minnie is not happy. The next ten minutes are focussed on consoling her. We follow the meandering pathway through the trees, and Jenni has to carry her distraught child. I lead the way, directing her round boggy areas and looking for the easiest route back to the main path.

Jenni finally has some success when she tells Minnie that she can wipe her hands on her mum. I also offer up my hat, which is refused at first, but later it helps to lift her spirits again. Little by little, Minnie cheers up. But she is upset that she will have to change her favourite dress, chosen specifically for the new year’s celebrations. As we emerge from the woodland, Jenni has mud smeared across her face like a camouflaged soldier.

Back at my house, Jenni gets Minnie cleaned up and changed, while I load the car with bottles and boxes. Tonight, we will eat together, play games with the children, watch television, drink champagne, welcome in the new year in good company.

Last Hogmanay, Jenni and Minnie joined me and my children in the Lake District, and we jumped into the new year together – a Danish tradition that I learned from my brother-in-law, which requires standing on chairs and leaping off into a prosperous future. Jenni and I have decided we will do this every year. I like the positivity, the energy, and the action of meeting any new experiences that the coming year might bring.

Since I leapt into 2025 with Jenni, the year has brought me many things, and among the most valuable have been the 34 walks that I have completed round Lenzie Moss. I have walked with friends, family, neighbours, ecologists, scientists, artists, writers, and I have met several new people from the local area. I have circled the Moss in summer, autumn and winter; early in the morning and late at night. I have come to know this place well and I have learnt a lot from its pathways and its peat bog, and from the stories of the people who live and work here. I am happy to be bringing this year to an end by sharing this place with my old friend and her wonderful little girl.

Dec 31, 2025

From shared beginnings, my younger brother Phil and I have taken quite different paths through life. Phil went to university in Sheffield, as did my sister, so they were always closer to our family home in Derbyshire. Since I moved to Scotland 25 years ago, we have not spent huge amounts of time together, and when we have it has generally been during gatherings with the rest of the family. Phil now works as a finance director for a large outsourcing company in London, where he recently relocated. He has a very busy social life and travels a lot with friends and through work (recent trips include India, South America and Svalbard). There have been very few times when it has just been the two of us, but as Phil is the first to arrive to Lenzie for Christmas this year, we have a few hours together on the morning of Christmas Eve. He is keen to join me for a walk round the Moss before the rest of the family start to appear.

Phil arrived by train from London late last night and we shared some cheese and wine and caught up before bed. He is not yet officially on holiday and today he has ‘a big deal to tie up’ before he can switch off from work. He is receiving emails from the second he wakes up. Our walk will have to be early and relatively quick, and then we will set up an office space for him in his nephew’s bedroom. By tomorrow, there will be several people and dogs here.

We join the Moss at the end of Fern Avenue, and I notice the smell of gas once again. I phoned the National Gas Emergency Service when I walked by yesterday morning and there were engineers in and out of my neighbours’ houses for the rest of the day. I can’t help but feel guilty that one of them is now without a working boiler, meaning that they might be missing heating or an oven over Christmas. But as my brother rightly points out, I would feel a lot worse if I hadn’t called it in and there had been an accident.

We step away from domestic infrastructure, and into the darkness of Bea’s Path. It is strikingly quiet and we talk with hushed voices. But it is also busier than expected and we encounter a parade of walkers, some presumably commuting to the station and others with dogs. We see the blinding torchlight first, moving unpredictably through the blackness and difficult to gauge for speed or distance. Then a mumbled or nodded greeting as they pass. When I took an early morning walk with Cathy, it was midsummer and the sun had risen long before we set off. Greetings were much warmer then, but now it seems that nobody is ready or able to connect.

Along the north woods path, the lights from the houses remind us that we are never far from human inhabitations. Phil has recently moved to Putney, and he is close to a number of large green spaces – Putney Common, Richmond Park and Wimbledon Common. These spaces are important to him and offer a valuable escape from a frenetic urban life. He walks and runs in these parks and says that in places, it feels like you are in the middle of the Peak District. He mentions Richmond’s red and fallow deer, and I tell him about Lenzie’s roes.

My brother knows a lot about deer. His friend is a professional deer stalker, and Phil has often joined him on shoots. Phil even completed a qualification last year, so has a lot of current knowledge of deer management and ecology. His friend has recently taken a new post at Kielder Forest in Northumberland and is busy culling twenty per cent of the herds there. Phil hopes to join him there in the next few weeks.

I have been entirely convinced of the need to manage deer in this way. Deer have huge impacts on the environment, preventing the regeneration of woodland and limiting biodiversity. In the absence of natural predators such as wolves or lynx, their numbers have to be controlled by shooting, which is the only viable way of managing populations at scale. I am very sure that Phil practices deer stalking with the utmost care and responsibility. I am equally sure that it is something I will never choose to do.

Phil talks about the quality of time he now spends in the outdoors through this hobby. He says that looking for something in the landscape means slowing down and attending to the environment in a different way. He talks about sitting and waiting at dawn or dusk, alert to the slightest change and witness to birds and animals’ movements in time and space. These are the things that matter to him. I think of what Jill told me about peat cutting on Lewis: that people who extract peat there know how to do it sustainably and maintain a deep respect for the land. These ostensibly violent practices of rural life – cutting, shooting, culling – can foster a much greater sense of care and responsibility than is usually found in urban and peri-urban green spaces.

Phil has not come prepared for a muddy walk round the Moss (he has travelled light as his next stop is Marrakesh). He opts for the south wood path rather than trekking across the bog. As the sky lightens, we watch the trains speeding past on their way to Edinburgh, notably emptier than usual but still transporting those busy professionals who need to tie up their various deals on Christmas Eve. Phil also needs to get back to the laptop. I will prepare for my parents and children arriving while he works, and we will all be sitting round the kitchen table before the day returns to darkness.

While we have circled the Moss more quickly than I am accustomed to on these walks, it hasn’t felt rushed. We have still been able to slow down, attune to the environment, and take notice of the changing light. It strikes me that what I am doing through this project is deepening my connection with this place, getting to know it better, learning to read the landscape and know its patterns and cycles. Phil and I might do things differently sometimes, and our journeys might take us in different directions, and play out at different speeds and scales, but as I complete my early morning walk with my brother on Christmas Eve, I am reminded, and reassured, that we share the same values.

Dec 24, 2025

The station carpark is full when I meet Meike, so I jump in her car, and we find a spot by the entrance to the Moss on Heath Avenue. This is Meike’s first visit to Lenzie, but she has a long-standing connection to peatlands. She is a researcher at the University of Glasgow, where she conducts interdisciplinary research in archaeology and soil health. Like Phil, I was introduced to Meike’s work when she presented at the Peat Café. Today, I will learn about soil science, peat formation, and X-ray fluorescence.

Meike asks me about this project: what I’m doing it for, how long it will take, what I will do with all the data. I assume that I have some convincing to do about slower, exploratory ways of working. But Meike understands completely. She talks about the ways in which universities prioritise productivity at the expense of creativity. Like the artists I have walked with recently, Meike values the time it takes to become part of an environment. I suggest that working at a bog meets this impulse to slow down with its muddy, meandering pathways. Meike says that she ‘absolutely loves bogs’ and tells me of others that she has come to know, including those in her home country of the Netherlands.

From the city of Delft, Meike spent time in York and on the Orkney Islands, before securing a PhD position at Glasgow. She remembers watching the television series Monarch of the Glen when she was growing up, and says she imagined living here ever since. Her love of the Scottish countryside is now informing her work. As an archaeologist, Meike looks for differences in the landscape. She investigates past usages and uncovers evidence of settlement or agriculture. While her methods are technical and precise, she also recognises the importance of story. This bringing together of data and narrative, analysis and interpretation, is not always easy.

I ask Meike about her methods. She uses something called PXRF (Portable X-ray fluorescence), which involves using a hand-held device to take readings from core samples. This returns data, which indicate the elemental composition of the soil. There are different readings for bohrium or zinc, for example. High levels of titanium can indicate an influx of ‘detrital input’, which might occur due to erosion of loose soil caused by ploughing. In this way, Meike asks to what extent past human activities have remained measurable. Soil health tells a story of rapid industrialisation, agricultural expansion, and shifting farming practices.

We walk along the path across the bog (Meike is unfazed by, if not drawn to, the mud). The recent rainfall has highlighted the deep footprints that are sunk into the raised pathway. I tell Meike all about the tensions I am discovering around access and land management. Meike understands the need to prevent access, and she talks about the dichotomy of individualism vs. communalism. In an environmental context such as this, Meike strongly believes that we have to make personal sacrifices for the benefit of the planet. If that means sticking to the main paths, then so be it.

I notice that Meike has been talking about peat as a soil, and I ask her about this. When I walked with Jill back in July, she mentioned that there had been some disagreement within her interdisciplinary research team about the status of peat. Meike offers me a lesson in soil typology. I learn that sediment is material that has been displaced and has settled in a new location. After a period of stability, a living system emerges through the formation of soil. Peat is different: it forms through the build-up of decaying plant-matter, and it does so in situ. Peat is therefore organic and sedentary. But Meike is content to call it a soil. She works with the James Hutton Institute, which holds the National Soils Archive. Apparently, they classify peat as a soil, because in Scotland, if you discounted peat, there would be little else left.

I presume that Meike will be interested in the ruins of the peatworks, so we pass by the concrete platform and the foundations of the processing plant. Meike’s investigative drive kicks in and she explores the site, pointing out features that I hadn’t previously noticed, and speculating on their potential uses. She points out that the structures at either end of the platform are hollow and have filled with organic matter. One has trees growing from inside it. At the processing shed, she notes what looks like a fireplace with soot marks on the wall. I wonder how I have not noticed these details before.

Meike asks me whether I have found any old maps or documents about the peatworks and I struggle to justify why I haven’t really looked. I think it is because I am trying to contain the project to the time and space of these walks, without relying on external research. The point, I suppose, is not to know as much as I can about Lenzie Moss. Rather, it is to see the site through other people’s eyes. Meike’s response to this place is at once scientific and environmentalist. Both Meike and Phil have shown me how we can know these places better through X-rays and pollen analysis. But as Meike stands looking out over the bog and the woodlands, her primary concern is with protecting these important environments, which are vital on the fringes of a large, industrial city like Glasgow. A deep knowledge of a place leads to understanding and responsibility.

I have walked with a few people recently – Phil, Chris, Brian – who also have not been to Lenzie Moss before. It is always fascinating to see the different ways in which people locate themselves here and make sense of this environment through the prism of their own work and disciplinary perspectives. Today, Meike has directed my attention to the composition of the peat beneath our feet. While we haven’t removed any samples, taken any readings or analysed any data, I have heard about new ways in which this is possible. And I have learned that the soil is an archive of human and more-than-human events and actions. If we can learn to read it, who knows what stories it will tell us.

Dec 22, 2025

I arrive at the station in a rainstorm, but I am well prepared with waterproofs from head to toe. Brian meets me off the train from Edinburgh, and before we join the Moss through the carpark, he stops to get kitted up too. This is his first visit to Lenzie, but as an outdoor educator and researcher, he is no stranger to walking in inclement weather. I wonder what lessons the Moss will have for us today.

I met Brian when he attended a workshop I organised for the University of Edinburgh’s Sustainability in Education Research Group, of which we are both members. We went searching for hedgehogs around a student hall of residence, and we used creative methods to imagine non-human experiences of the site. I wrote an account of the event for the online journal, The Revelator. Coincidentally, in the same week, I joined a volunteer conservation group at Lenzie Moss and was tasked with cutting holes in a fence to enable hedgehogs to pass through.

In field trips like this, the roles of learners and teachers are blurred. Brian will teach me about outdoor education, and I will tell him about peatlands. He mentions that the Scottish Government have just approved a Residential Outdoor Education Bill, which entitles primary school children to a week at an outdoor learning centre. When I walked with Iona recently, she talked about her recent residential at Blairvadach. It was a hugely formative experience, and I tell Brian about the positive impact it had on her. Iona’s school is in the city, so opportunities like this are particularly valuable. Children who attend the schools in Lenzie are lucky to have the Moss for more regular outdoor education experiences, albeit at a smaller scale. I have often seen nursery and school outings here, and recall Clare telling me about accompanying her children on these trips.

Brian has had some amazing experiences as a teacher in different countries and cultures. At the start of his career, he spent time in New Mexico as a teacher in an Indigenous community. While he felt uneasy about the ‘white saviour’ dynamic of the project, the experience introduced him to a different model of education that was deeply rooted in place and culture. Brian married a fellow teacher, and they spent years living in different countries: Costa Rica, Armenia, the Netherlands, and now Scotland, where Brian is a year into a PhD on sustainable futures of the United World Colleges, the scholarship-based group of international schools, where he did many of his placements. Brian advocates a slower and more thoughtful approach to education and reflects on the value of a place-based approach that brings learners out of the classroom to engage with their wider environment.

The rain is much lighter now and as we take the pathway across the bog, the deer make their way into the southern woodland. We watch their progress and they are strikingly silhouetted amongst the trees. Now it is my turn to become the educator. I share all my knowledge about the peatworks and point out some of the key features of the site: the raised lines of the light railway; the exclosure and pools that have been added more recently; the fences and woodland management practices. I realise that I probably know enough now to host a student fieldtrip here and wonder if I might have the opportunity to do that one day.

We segue to talking about work. Brian is aware of a course that I run at the University called Creating Edinburgh: The interdisciplinary city. Students are invited to select from a sort of menu of pre-prepared field topics, including Sustainable Edinburgh and Wild Edinburgh, along with more discipline-based topics like Business and Mathematical Edinburgh. From these options, students choose which topics they would like to study and decide the order that they will do them in. Each week, in small groups, they then head out into the city to visit key sites and complete a series of tasks. Then they return to the tutorial room, where they work with a tutor to report on their experiences and reflections, and build a picture of the city from multiple perspectives. It has been a popular course – particularly with visiting international students – and Brian would make an excellent tutor. I encourage him to apply when we start recruitment in the summer.

What would a student field trip at Lenzie Moss look like? Perhaps we would provide some information beforehand about the various flora and fauna that make this place their home: the sphagnum moss; the meadow pipits; and the roe deer (we have seen all of these today). We could offer some statistics about the fragility of peatlands and tell students about the balance between access to the Local Nature Reserve and the need to protect and preserve the fragile bog. I would stress this: access has to be responsible and there are areas here where it might be best not to tread. Then, we could provide a map and direct students to follow the path around the site to see what they could find. We would ask them to record, document, take notes and pictures.

And then, because the act of return is vital, we could gather everyone together to reflect on the experience. Perhaps this could take place on the concrete platform in the woods – a temporary learning space amongst the trees. Students could share their findings and observations and tell each other about any unexpected encounters they had (there are always some). And then I would ask them whether they walked onto the bog, and how far they went. I would ask them whether they felt conflicted about doing this. How did they justify the act of passage to themselves and their classmates? What is the educational value of visiting these places, and might it be argued that it is sometimes better to leave them unvisited?

These questions are at the heart of my own learning journey on the Moss. They have not been, and probably will not be, resolved. But in the final section of our walk, Brian and I turn off the main path and walk a short way into the centre of the bog. We pick clumps of moss to examine, and we get close to the deer, who have made another appearance. We are mindful of the damaged peat layer, and we observe deep footprints and eroded banks along the way. I have been doing this for many months now and I always pause and consider the value in diverting from the main path. Today, walking with Brian, I think there is great value in it. It reminds us of the importance of learning from the natural environment, being outside, and meeting the world on its own terms. I am pleased that in Scotland at least, all children will now have a chance to do that.

Dec 19, 2025

In the same week that I started this project, my friend James stayed up all night delivering a litter of puppies. He hadn’t planned to be doing this, but he had reluctantly agreed to look after his mum’s dog during her pregnancy, to raise the newly born pups, and to sell them on when they were old enough. In a household with two young children, it was pretty much accepted that they would keep one. They chose the only girl and called her Bonnie.

I hadn’t planned to have a pet, either. But when I visited with my children, several humans and dogs looked up at me with wide eyes and I folded. ‘Okay’, I said. ‘We’ll take that one and he can be called Clyde’. I have only seen my daughter reach that level of happiness once before, when her little brother was born. Bonnie now lives with James and his family, and Clyde with me and mine, but they spend a great deal of time together and I am very grateful for my friend’s help. James and his wife Annabel have always been there to support me; Annabel used to look after Ruairidh one day a week, when he was still a baby.

Clyde has been unwell and has taken to his bed this morning. I walked too far with him the other day and he has since been lethargic and full of cold. I think he’s okay, but another lazy day will do him good. So, James and Bonnie will join me for a circle of the Moss while Clyde stays at home. But he wouldn’t have been allowed to join us anyway. He has already been on one of these walks with my mum, and allowing him a second go would be against the rules!

James has just dropped the kids at school and driven over here from Bishopbriggs. He brings Bonnie into the kitchen while I get ready, and suddenly Clyde is full of energy again. The two puppies are a handful. They are often quite rough with each other and while we are sure that it is all good natured, there seems to be a lot of biting and growling involved in their play. The size difference is getting much greater now. Clyde looks twice the size of his little sister, who nevertheless gives as good as she gets. We leave Clyde behind and I feel guilty as he barks disapprovingly.

Last time I walked round the Moss with James, both our families joined us. As we shepherded our various children and animals round a muddy bog, I remember thinking how times have changed. I met James and Annabel in my first year of university, after I moved to Glasgow at the age of eighteen. For years, we spent much of our time at house parties, pubs and clubs. James and I made theatre shows together and have been on countless trips around Europe. While we still manage the occasional holiday with our friendship group, we mostly see each other with the children these days.

We have both left the city now, although James moved to Bishopbriggs several years before I finally let go of my urban lifestyle. James says that they left Glasgow and moved to Scotland, by which he means that their current home feels more rooted in the community, and connected to the landscape around the town. Bonnie and Clyde have now shifted our lifestyles even further away from regular drinking in the city’s bars, towards walks in the countryside and meals at each other’s homes. It means a lot that after all these years of births, deaths, marriages and divorces, we are all still so close.

As we follow the pathways round the Moss, we meet a lot of other dog walkers. Bonnie is excited to explore an unfamiliar place and to meet new friends. She bounds up over-enthusiastically to all the other dogs and James has to hold her back. James is also enjoying these encounters, and he chats away to everyone we meet. James is a pub quiz master and Humanist celebrant, so he is in the business of meeting people and asking them lots of questions. It takes us a long time to reach the boardwalk.

We sit on a bench and look out over the Moss. I spot the deer playing in the centre of the bog. Last week, James conducted a wedding ceremony on the Isle of Skye. He shows me the photos and says that the landscape here is very similar. I see what he means: the grasses and the heather are recognisable, although the stunning mountainous backdrop is quite different to our current view of the unassuming Campsies. I remember camping on Skye with James twenty years ago. I wonder how many miles we have walked together since then.

We follow the path through the birchwood, and James lets Bonnie off the lead. She bounces between the trees, running back and forth across the path. An elderly toy poodle, who I also met on my walk with Iona, is bothered by Bonnie’s boisterous play, so James puts her back on the lead for the last section of the walk. We complete our circuit and return to my kitchen, where we share a cup of coffee and a slice of chocolate log.

We chat about our plans for the weekend. On Saturday, James, Annabel and I will meet four other friends for our annual ‘urban family Christmas’. They have a babysitter arranged, and my parents have kindly offered to stay at my house for the weekend to child and dog sit while we are off having fun. We will meet for lunch in Glasgow and then we’ll see where the day takes us. Times like that are rare and precious, and I always look forward to them immensely. But they are the exception now to a different way of being together. Today, I am embracing these walks around Lenzie Moss with old and new friends, sharing food in our kitchens, and making plans for the children and the puppies. This is a new phase in my life, and I am thankful that James is still such a big part of it.

Dec 18, 2025

The day is slow to start and when it finally does, it stays overcast and grey. Thankfully the rain is holding off when I meet Linsey. We walk up the high street, and I point out the boarded-up windows on a couple of the shop fronts. When I bought a wreath for my front door in Moss Flowers a few days ago, I discovered that the glass had been smashed during the night. There was a lot of vandalism that weekend. Graffiti tags have appeared on signs and walls. Christmas brings out the best and worst in people.

Linsey and I are both off work today and we are meeting for a walk between present buying and wrapping. My house is going to be busy next week, so I am getting as much done as I can before my children and extended family and all their dogs start to arrive. Linsey has lots to get ready too, but she has stopped by Lenzie on her way to visit a relative. A walk round the Moss will be a welcome break for both of us.

Linsey started to visit Lenzie Moss during the lockdown years of 2020 and 2021. With two young children to entertain, and the usual indoor play centres closed, she began to venture out into local parks and woodland. From their home in the neighbouring town of Bishopbriggs, they searched for nearby places to spend time outdoors. Lenzie Moss was a perfect size for a morning’s visit. They would poke sticks into the bog to see how deep they went, take detours along woodland trails to see what they could find, and seek out ruined buildings and public artworks. Their visits always took longer than expected.

In the years that followed, Linsey kept coming back here. Once, after a friend had been through a difficult time, they walked round the Moss together and talked things over. For Linsey, there is something about the circular route that makes a walk here particularly satisfying. You know where you are going and you leave the site at the same place as you enter it. The layout of paths around the perimeter of the bog lends itself to an hour in company, as I can attest.

As we turn onto the northern path through the wood, I notice a canvas structure through the trees. It looks like a tent or some sort of shelter. The woodland is very wet today, and it is not easy to get any closer, so we move on without investigating further. I hope that nobody is sleeping in there at such a cold and wet time of year. Hopefully it is a hideout for adventurous local kids – those who don’t vandalise public property for fun.

Linsey tells me about a den that her family built in the woods four years ago. It still stands, although it has deteriorated with the years. They visited lots of other places during lockdown, many of which they continue to return to. The den was in the Wilderness Plantation – the site of a Roman fortlet on the Antonine Wall. And they have also enjoyed visits to Cairnhill woods in Bearsden and the fairy woods in Milton-of-Campsie. Often, Linsey finds out about new places through community groups and social networks. Some of these sites, like the Moss, have intriguing industrial pasts. Wilderness Plantation is close to Mavis Valley, a former mining village with a tragic history, which was abandoned in the 1940s. Linsey tells me that the remnants of the old buildings can still be found amongst the trees.

Linsey values the proximity of people. She likes places where back gardens border green spaces and is drawn to games and activities arranged by local parents and teachers. I have seen this side of the Moss. I remember Steve telling me about stone painting, and recall the various artworks and performances I have encountered here. These qualities made the Moss a popular site during lockdown and a lot of people discovered it then, or began using it in a different way (as with Cathy’s 6am walks).

We pass a large group of dogs and their walkers at the top of the boardwalk. I tell Linsey about my own dog, and I mention that he spends a lot of time in Bishopbriggs. It turns out that Linsey knows my friends, James and Annabel, who live with Clyde’s sister, Bonnie. James looks after Clyde whenever I am at work in Edinburgh. Linsey’s daughter is in the same class as my friends’ eldest (my Humanist ‘guide son’). She has often seen them with the two puppies on the school run. Connections like this often happen on these walks, as I recently noted when I walked with Michael. In another such coincidence, I will be walking here with James and Bonnie tomorrow.

During our walk we have noted the location of the stacks – the public artworks that Linsey always looks out for when she comes here. We reach the third and final one as we pass the old peatworks. This, too, has been graffitied: a tag with a V and and N forming an X in the centre. I wonder what it means and who put it there. Close to the stack sculptures are signposts with QR codes, which link to the Trails and Tales website. Linsey has discovered a few artworks and new places to explore through this online resource, which documents a large-scale heritage and arts project that ran for a few years from 2014 across the East Dunbartonshire area.

As we wander along the path by the railway line, we pass a spruce tree that somebody has decorated with baubles and tinsel. Against the barren birches and the leaf litter, it is a welcome moment of festive cheer. In the busy run up to Christmas, someone has taken time to make this gesture of community spirit. There is a strange sort of balance enacted by this tree. It somehow makes the broken windows less impactful.

In different ways, people will continue to mark this landscape. While the graffiti, public artworks, signage, and festive installations are all created for different reasons, by people with different relationships to the Moss, they are all part of this complex, multi-faceted site. I understand why Linsey is drawn to green spaces that are characterised by human inhabitations. Lenzie Moss is no wilderness: it is lived in, used, and loved. As I am discovering through this project, these human interventions create this place, as much as they take place within it.

Dec 17, 2025

Today is the first day of this year’s wonderfully long Christmas holiday, so I should be relaxed and jovial. But I have just had to take my car back to the garage after some very expensive repairs have failed to do the job. So I am feeling stressed as I return to Lenzie by train, just in time to meet Michael outside Billington’s. A friendly introduction soon settles my mood, and we set off to join the Moss through the station carpark. We are accompanied by Lucy, Michael’s old red labrador, who very calmly wanders along beside us. I will talk and walk myself into better spirits.

Michael is in his fifties and has very recently moved back to Lenzie with his family, after many decades living elsewhere. He first moved to the town at the age of seven and lived here until he left to study. His memories of growing up here are not entirely positive, but he talks about returning home and doing so on his own terms. For Michael, the view of the Campsies across the bog represents a lifelong connection to this place. It is the image that comes to mind when he thinks of home.

Michael tells me that a lot has changed here while he has been away. There is more to do now, with a lively high-street and improved transport links. As I also learnt from Alison, the Moss has been developed a great deal too, with new pathways and conservation of the woodland and the bog, and careful management of the relationship between the two. Michael has changed, too. He moved here after living in different cities – London, Edinburgh and Brussels – and then settling in the nearby new town of Cumbernauld. As he enjoyed a career change from public relations to academia, he reached a slower, quieter phase of life that would be nurtured by living next to the Moss. Michael also tells me that Lucy has never been happier than on her walks here.

As a teenager in the eighties, the Moss was there for Michael in a different way. He would come here on his own as an escape from the cloying insularism of small-town Scotland, with all its sectarianism and conservatism. The Moss was also a good place for a sneaky cigarette. As a catholic, Michael went to school at St. Ninian’s in Kirkintilloch, beyond the predominantly protestant area of Lenzie. Michael and his school friends typically played together in Peel Park, so Lenzie Moss was often his private domain. At other times, Michael would visit the Moss with friends. He says that there must be evidence of this: countless lost shoes, claimed by the bog.

Michael’s memories of growing up here lead me to reminisce about my own childhood in rural Derbyshire, and we soon discover a connection. The nearest town to my village was Matlock, where I went to secondary school. It turns out that Michael’s wife is from Matlock as well. Michael moved to Lenzie in the early eighties, in the year that I was born. I suppose that his wife would also have been growing up in Derbyshire back then. Walking this route with so many people has revealed several unexpected connections like this: Steve attending a wedding in my garden; Sophie and Cathy knowing each other from university. It is always pleasing to be reminded of how entangled we all are.

We find another connection around my work in theatre, and I learn that Michael is from a family of actors, including the well-known couple, Barbara Rafferty and Sean Scanlan, both of whom appeared in the popular Scottish sitcom, Rab C. Nesbitt. Michael’s fifteen-year-old also acts and has had roles in award-winning films. After my walk with Nalini, I have been thinking of developing a performance project about Lenzie, so it is useful to know that there are more actors living here. I think I have now met enough to form a small theatre company!

We reach the bottom of the boardwalk and Michael opts for the less muddy path along the railway, which is also Lucy’s preference. I suggest a detour, and we wander along the edge of the bog a short way to look out towards the Campsies. The sun shines through the clouds, casting shifting light onto the hills. Michael enjoys how remote this place can feel, even though Glasgow is only a few short miles southwest. He likens it to Rannoch Moor, a large area of wetlands to the south of Lochaber, which I traversed years ago when I walked the West Highland Way. Once again, I find myself imagining a longer walk that starts here and takes me over the hills and far to the north. Maybe I could chart a route that connects all the peatbogs from home to the Hebrides (from where Jill has just emailed me).

We double back on ourselves, and Michael says that this is something he always tries to avoid on the Moss. If he veers off the main path and ends up somewhere new, he always looks for an alternative route. I like this rule and I share my own for this project: always anticlockwise; only one person at a time; no predetermined questions or topics. I am discovering that everyone who regularly walks round the Moss falls into their own patterns and habits. Walking with Michael shows me that some of these can endure over time, lying dormant for decades but easily reestablished when we return to the places of our childhood.

It seems that Michael is very happy to be back in Lenzie. Looking back to his earlier life here, he even wonders whether it was really the town that was the problem. Maybe some sixteen-year-olds would have a tough time wherever they were. At any rate, it suits him here now and he is where he wants to be.

As we reach the station car park (I almost forgot about my car for a while!), we chat for a bit longer about work, before we go our separate ways. We agree to stay in touch. It is good to be slowly getting to know more people in the community through these walks. While I am much newer to Lenzie than many of the people I have walked with, each time I complete a circle of the Moss, I feel that I know this place a little better.

Dec 12, 2025