Get out there and have your adventure today. (Stephen Mason, Ride to the Midnight Sun)

On the morning before I meet Steve, it is raining heavily. I feel confident that he won’t be phased by the weather though. Steve is a true adventurer. Last year, he completed all of Scotland’s 282 Munros (mountains over 3,000 feet). He has been all over the world on his trusty BMW motorbike, Borris. And he has written extensively about his travels. Steve’s books are full of warm and engaging anecdotes and they are philosophical, too. They tell a story of embracing life, seeking out new experiences, and making things happen. He tells me that he is ‘a motor biker who writes, rather than a writer who bikes’. But I don’t know what he is like as a biker and all I can say is that I am enjoying his stories.

The rain obligingly eases off as we set off around the Moss. I am interested to know what Steve feels about this place. Compared to the long, dusty roadways of North America, the unfamiliar territories of Russia and Patagonia, and the mountains of Morocco, I wonder if he sees this bog as too small, too local and too predictable? Steve understands what I am getting at and tells me that on the contrary, he very much appreciates life in Lenzie and sees the Moss as a special place that he will always be able to return to. The thought of returning has helped him through some of the most challenging parts of his trips. When Steve was searched by Russian police and detained when they found a packet of codeine tablets that he had inadvertently brought along from Scotland, he was seriously worried that he might not make it back.

Steve moved to Lenzie 25 years ago after spending most of his life in Ayrshire. He also spent some time working in Silicon Valley but has long since retired from his work in computer manufacture. Like me, Steve didn’t know very much about the town before he decided to move here. The Moss was an extra bonus, and he is thankful to live close to a place that is so well maintained and with such a rich history. Steve often walks and cycles on these pathways.

Unlike some other areas of Glasgow’s greenbelt, Steve feels reasonably confident that the Moss will be protected from development. This is a concern of his though: while Steve understands the importance of building new homes and infrastructure, he is worried about the encroachment onto greenspaces. He lives near Whitegates Park, which has been designated as the site for a huge new school development in the area and a lot of the community are devastated by the loss of a vital parkland at the centre of the town. This has made him value proximity to nature even more.

As we walk down the boardwalk, a slow line of roe deer crosses over the bog beside us. Steve is pleased to see them for the first time. I am becoming quite familiar with these deer through these walks, and they seem to favour this area particularly. I attempt to photograph their passage, but they are a bit too far away for a good image. The photos that I manage to take are apparently of the bog with the line of trees and the top of the hill range in the background. But look closely and you can see a few white tails. The Moss is full of gifts and surprises for those who visit often and look carefully.

Steve tells me about an occasion when he was walking on the Moss with his family and they came across a group placing painted stones along the path. He later added to the collection with his young grandchildren. I mention that I have previously found such stones buried by my house and wonder if they were made by the pupils at the old primary school next door. It turns out that Steve knows my house – his wife’s friend having lived there around 15 years ago. Steve remembers attending a wedding that took place in my garden! I tell him about my walk with Sophie, when I learnt about some other past residents of my house, a couple who lived there many years earlier.

As we look out to the Campsies, I ask Steve about his Munro bagging. For his last climb, he chose Beinn na Lap, by Corrour Station on Rannoch Moor (the highest and most remote main line station in Britain). I climbed the same mountain in 2006 with a friend and remember snowy peaks and thick fog making the route treacherous. For a couple of years, I climbed several Munros and aspired to bag them all one day. Many years have passed since my last one and I have to admit that I have given up on the idea of climbing them all. Steve completed his challenge on a much finer day, and he also walked with his family. On the same day that Steve climbed his final Munro, his 5-year-old grandson managed his first. My own 5-year-old, Ruairidh, enjoys hill walking, but hasn’t yet summitted a whole mountain. Steve inspires me to head up a Munro with Ru one day soon.

Steve talks about the appeal of Munro bagging. He says he is very goal-orientated and he enjoyed keeping a spreadsheet of his climbs, revelling in changing the cells to green each time he completed another peak. I suppose that my Lenzie Moss project is goal-orientated, too. I will reach 100 walks in a couple of years or so, and that will be a good feeling. It is always satisfying to add another post to the blog. Perhaps Bog Blogging could become a new craze.

But I also think that my slow, repetitive circling of the mire offers something counter to the big expeditions that Steve has enjoyed. Lenzie Moss might not be experienced on the same scale as the motorbikes and Munros. But it has deer and stones and views of the hills beyond, and I discover new things each time I share an hour with a new walker. Every time I travel round the Moss, I go on a little adventure.

Nov 1, 2025

Our desires stare back at us, yellow-eyed and snarling, from the thickets of the mind. (George Monbiot, Feral)

My friend Cairan is visiting for the evening, and I persuade him that a pre-dinner walk round the Moss will be a good idea. We meet at the train station in a downpour. The clocks have changed at the weekend, so it is now much darker at this time. I am not sure whether Cairan’s initial enthusiasm has persisted. By his own admission, he is ‘not an outdoors kind of person’ and any hopes he may have had of a gentle stroll on a sunny autumn evening will need to be adjusted. But he is well prepared with heavy boots and a warm coat, and after a brief pit stop at home to drop off a bag and a dog (Clyde has already had his turn), we are soon entering Lenzie Moss at the end of my street, just as the rain holds off.

The woodland trail is hard to see. We stand for a moment to let our vision adjust and slowly the faint outline of Bea’s Path fades into view. We take tentative steps northwards. This is only the second time that I have visited this place after dark, and it feels very different. Occasionally, we are blinded by bright torchlight coming in the other direction and greeted by voices whose owners we cannot make out until they have passed. Outside lights from the houses off Blackthorne Avenue illuminate the path by the primary school. There seems an unnecessary level of light pollution here.

Cairan tells me that keeping parks and green places unlit can actually make these areas feel safer for people passing through. When pathways and walking routes are saturated in light, the wooded areas and grasslands beyond become hidden, unseeable places. In public parks like Glasgow’s Kelvingrove, beside which I used to live, ‘sensitive’ lighting has recently been added, partly to avoid this effect.

We peer into the darkness and wonder what lurks in there. A couple of years ago, Cairan and I spent a week working at Capital Theatres in Edinburgh to devise a new theatre performance, which we called Beasts. The idea was to present some fictional verbatim interviews with people who had seen big cats – suburban encounters with wild animals. We spliced these together with shaky film footage and photographs of possible sightings. Then the script shifted to speculative futures with cities taken over by nature. We now have some fragments of text and a loose structure for a show. Both of us hope we will find an opportunity to return to it one day, but the project has been placed on the back burner for now. Walking round the Moss this evening reminds us of the topic and raises the possibility of something wild hiding out there. I am hoping to see a shift of light, a displaced tree branch – something to help me imagine that a big cat might be close by.

A few days ago, I stood in my garden and watched a bat flying back and forth over my fence. I wonder if we will at least see a bat this evening. But if they are out there, they are also imperceptible in the darkness. Then a small white moth catches the light as it flutters by and I’m happy enough with that. We take a lot of photographs as we walk (Cairan has brought his camera, which is much better than the one on my iPhone). The trees are silhouetted against the sky and the First Quarter moon shines brightly as clouds drift past. As we join the boardwalk, the light show is enhanced by headlights from the vehicles crossing the railway bridge.

The vista opens up and we look up at the stars. We make out the Plough (seven of the bright stars of Ursa Major) very clearly, but this is the extent of our knowledge of astronomy. Several planes pass overhead, bright and noisy. We see a succession of trains as well and as we get closer, we can see through the windows into the well-lit carriages. The commuters don’t know that they are being observed from the shadows. Looking further to the west, the city is visible in a way that I have never realised during the day; thousands of tiny lights marking the urban area.

I don’t know what to make of all this movement, light and energy. It is mesmerising but we are standing by the heather-covered ‘peat hill’ that I climbed with Alison and also sat beside with Cathy early one morning. On those previous walks, this place felt quiet and calm – a spot to rest and reflect. This evening, the boardwalk is a nexus of transport routes. Rail, road and air carry people in all directions and each journey flashes past. I am taking in a lot of new information, and I feel tense and out of place.

We reach the end of the boardwalk, and I offer Cairan the option of walking through the bog and into the wood or taking the pathway along the railway line. He chooses the less muddy route and we set off back towards my house. We follow a boundary line between the modern infrastructure of the rail network and the old birchwood that veils the bog. I stay alert, attentive to any potential motion in the undergrowth.

As we turn back onto my street, I feel overwhelmed. I realise that I have been exerting all my senses during this walk. The lights and sounds and darkness have made a now familiar place feel strange and unknowable again. While there are no big cats staring back at us from the trees, the trees themselves seem wild and strange. While I welcome this feeling, I am still processing the uncanniness of the encounter.

I am pleased when Cairan tells me that he has had quite the opposite experience. He has been feeling stressed with work and had mentioned earlier to his boyfriend that he had probably taken on too many things this week. When I met him from the train earlier, he was worrying about an early start for a work trip tomorrow. Cairan tells me that the walk round the Moss has been a calming experience. Slow pace, hushed voices and the lights and sounds of the nighttime Moss have been good for him, and he now feels able to relax and enjoy the rest of the evening. Luckily, I have a pot of bolognaise and a bottle of wine waiting for us at home, which I am sure will taste all the better for the hour we have spent in the wild outdoors.

Oct 28, 2025

Ellie is sitting outside Billington’s with her partner and one-year-old daughter when I meet her for our walk. They are visiting from their home in the Scottish borders and haven’t been to Lenzie before. I have spoken with Ellie online and exchanged a few emails over the years, but this is the first time that we have met in person. Ellie is an artist, currently working in Scotland’s temperate rainforests – the ancient woodlands of the west coast. She makes sound recordings, films, photographs and sculptures, which respond to the textures and changes in different landscapes. Ellie is interested in questions about time and has been particularly drawn to the microworlds of lichen and bryophytes. She is enthusiastic about my project and the opportunity of a walk round Lenzie Moss. The plan is for the two of us to walk one way and for her family to walk the other, so at some point we will meet.

As we set off, I tell Ellie about an awful mistake that I made earlier. I had arranged a walk with someone else at the start of the day. Somehow, I had neglected to add this to my calendar, and it had completely slipped my mind. Later, when I checked my computer, I had received a couple of emails, ‘I’m here in the station car park’, then ‘I’m going to head off now’. They had driven quite far to meet me. Feeling terrible, I replied with a huge apology and expressed my hope that we still might be able to arrange a walk. I will completely understand if they decide against it now. For me, this project is about making time for people and taking a careful and ethical approach to walking and talking. I tell Ellie that I am upset with myself for having compromised these principles and wasted somebody’s time like this.

Ellie says all the right things, and we talk about our varied experiences of walking interviews, which both of us see as an important part of our creative practice. Ellie is studying for a PhD at Edinburgh College of Art. She is researching the different timescales of the forests where she works and searching for appropriate artistic responses to these complex places. She talks about the challenge of artists being ‘parachuted’ into a new site and the slow, sensitive time that it takes to make connections with the people who live and work there, before any artwork can be made. I recognise this from previous projects but realise that this one at Lenzie Moss has been quite different because I am part of the same community as many of the people I am walking with. For Ellie, there are more barriers and a greater distance to bridge before she feels ready to create artworks at her chosen sites. She is therefore conducting many interviews with people who know and understand the forest. Ellie records and transcribes her conversations as part of her research process. I tell her that I rely on written notes and memory, which inevitably means that I will miss or forget some things.

We look closely at the trees as we walk and Ellie regrets leaving her magnifying lens behind. Nevertheless, we attend to the intricate patterns of the lichen and identify Xanthoria parietina, commonly known as common orange or golden shield. I know very little about lichens, beyond the fact that they form through a symbiotic partnership between fungi and algae. Ellie tells me about the lichens and liverworts that she has encountered in her fieldwork. They are key indicator species whose presence suggests that you are likely within temperate rainforest. The location, age and diversity of lichen can tell us a lot about an ecosystem’s health and resilience. Because of Ellie’s interest in the temporalities of her field sites, she has been drawn to lichen after her initial interest in rhododendron and ash trees, as they require close attention and slow, mindful observation. The problem, which Ellie is now grappling with, is that institutional time is something quite different and she feels under pressure from the university to move from observing and learning to making and creating.

As we walk down the boardwalk, Ellie spots her partner and daughter coming the other way. We stop and chat for a while. They are interested in community ownership, and they mention Leadburn Community Woodland between Edinburgh and Peebles, a former conifer plantation that was purchased from Forestry Scotland in 2007. I wonder whether Lenzie Moss could ever be owned and managed by the community, and what benefits that might afford. On previous walks, I have heard about and gained an insight into the disconnect between the Moss and some local people, and the challenges of community perception of council management. Perhaps a different model of ownership would make a positive difference in this regard, encouraging more engagement and creating a greater sense of agency.

The two pairs continue in opposite directions, and Ellie and I turn off the boardwalk onto the path across the bog. We spend some time in the middle of the site, conscious of the exposed peat and the need to tread carefully. We stop to examine the healthy carpet of sphagnum moss and watch the cottongrass dancing in the breeze. When we look up, Ellie spots two deer running along the central raised area that used to be an internal railway line. Their white tails are easy to spot but otherwise they are well camouflaged against the heather.

Our route back to the town takes us through the south-east section of woodland and we see various fungi and lichen clinging to the birch trees. We even see a slime mold, which Ellie photographs. We walk slowly and lean into slower timescales. This puts us in a reflective mood, and we wonder about the role that artists can have in places like this. Ellie says that we are conduits between experts, publics and places, and she believes that site-based art can help people think differently about their environments. But for Ellie, it is so important for us to spend time learning, listening and getting to know the places where we work. She wonders what language she can use to argue for this as an essential part of a creative process.

Ellie also says that it is important for artists to understand what people want from them. I suppose the very bare minimum would be to turn up on time and not forget an appointment. From there, we can build towards a shared sense of belonging, a sensitive relationship with the environment, and artworks that really mean something to the people we meet, and matter to the places we visit.

Oct 18, 2025

Alison grew up in Lenzie in the 1970s and 80s. She went to school on the old site of Lenzie Moss Primary, which is now the playground for the new, larger school. It was said that the building sank a little into the bog each year.

Alison takes me to this place at the start of our walk. There are high fences around the perimeter now, which she says weren’t there before. At break times, the children were allowed to play on the Moss unsupervised. The school was connected to the bog by well-trodden pathways through the grassland. There were large holes in the ground – most likely created for the removal of peat – which the children would climb into. They felt surrounded by and connected to wildness. Alison says that she feels lucky to have had so much freedom growing up.

It is the first day of the October school holidays. Some young children cycle along Bea’s Path with their parents close behind, but it is generally quiet today. There is a gentle breeze whipping up fallen birch leaves into a perfect autumnal sky. We see a heron flying close overhead and a flock of geese passing far above. A gentle light draws us through the woods towards the peatlands. We pass a couple of teenage boys, lost in conversation.

The Moss was the backdrop to Alison’s teenage years, too. She and her friends would head up the ‘peat hill’ at the far side of the bog. The youth of Lenzie would meet up there to play and hang out. Everybody knew the spot. Their parents didn’t know where they were or what they were doing, but back then people were much more relaxed about their children’s whereabouts. I recall my own childhood days spent in the woodland near our village and I have to admit that I wouldn’t feel comfortable if my own children were to do the same. These wild, unruly landscapes are appropriate settings for rule breaking and risk taking.

Many of the houses that border the Moss were built in the years after Alison had left Lenzie. Some of them now stand on areas that she remembers as woodland, thick with blaeberry bushes. There are more established pathways and new ways onto the site. It is strange to realise that many of the features that have become waymarkers for me as I walk round the Moss – the cul-de-sac on Heather Drive, the pathway by my house, the boardwalk – were not there fifty years ago. Alison welcomes these developments to the extent that she is supportive of enhanced access to the site. At the same time, she feels a sense of loss, as the Moss is no longer as wild and unknowable as it was before.

Alison moved away to spend her student days in Edinburgh (where her daughter is now studying). After living elsewhere for some time, and after becoming a parent, she moved back to the area to be close to family. In the intervening years, a lot has changed. We approach the peat hill, and Alison observes that it is not much of a hill anymore. She wonders whether it seemed so much bigger and steeper because she was so much smaller, and that memory might have added a few feet. But we both think it more likely that erosion and peat extraction have flattened what was once a much higher area. Alison remembers fires burning here and thinks that some were set on purpose. I tell Alison something that Kay told me: that this hill was used for musket training in the 1700s. Surely, presuming that is true, this was a much more pronounced feature of the landscape.

We walk to the top of the hill – or perhaps it should now be called a mound or a knoll – to look out over the bog. I have never done this before and despite it only being a slight elevation, this position still offers a new vantage point. We can see a peaty, stagnant pool at the bottom of the slope, and beyond it is the open space of the mire. Alison remembers the ditches and the raised baulks that cut across the site in the years before she left Lenzie. Around the same time that she moved back, the large-scale restoration work took place, which Jackie told me involved in-filling these hollows and levelling the landscape. Alison had not noticed this reprofiling of the Moss before now.

At the bottom of the boardwalk, we turn onto the path across the bog. It has been raining a lot this month, so the ground is muddy and holds so much water that it springs under foot. Alison says you haven’t really visited a bog if you don’t get filthy or lose a boot. She remembers trudging home with mud-soaked socks. Thankfully, this doesn’t happen today, but we do tempt fate by following the raised path into the middle of the bog. When we get there, we stand still for a while amongst the sphagnum and the bog cotton. The wind hurries along a single meadow pipet, rising and falling through the air. Sunlight shifts across the Campsie hills to the north and Alison plans her next hike.

We enjoy the feeling of remoteness despite our proximity to the city. Looking to the southwest, there is a clear view of the high-rise flats in Springburn, marking the edge of the Glasgow conurbation. As we look out across this varied landscape, it strikes me that on these many walks that I am taking round the Moss, I have rarely stopped and taken it all in like this – felt the wind on my face, allowed my gaze to travel out into the distance, and revelled in the calm and quiet that this place offers so much of. While a lot might have changed here, I imagine that this feeling has persisted over the decades. It must have been very special growing up here, and I am happy that my own children will have this experience as well.

Oct 10, 2025

As landscapes, bogs embrace ambiguity and edges, the sensibilities that come with changing perspectives. They hold their multitudes within them, at a distance to anyone who affords them a glance. (Alys Fowler, Peatlands)

Ali is halfway through a PhD in Human Geography at the University of Edinburgh, where they are writing poetry about peatlands, disability and queerness. Ali lives in Glasgow and has visited Lenzie Moss before, so it is easy for them to hop on a train at the start of the working week and meet me for a walk. I am grateful for the opportunity to think more about the unruliness and complexity of boggy places, and to learn about human positionalities in the landscape – how we might exist differently here. A few months ago, I walked with another PhD student, Ada, and we talked about creative methods and queer ecologies. I am looking forward to continuing a journey into other ways of knowing and being with the bog.

I meet Ali off the train from Glasgow on an overcast Monday morning. Relatively new to Scotland, Ali studied English literature and creative writing at the University of East Anglia, before they moved to Glasgow in 2022. Ali says that they are surprised by how suddenly Autumns start here. This feels particularly true after Storm Amy visited at the weekend: there are now fallen branches at every turn, and the countless dog walkers who we meet are dressed to weather the wind and the mud. Ali and I are well prepared in our waterproof jackets and boots. The sky and the land are showing us how unruly and complex they can be, but we are here to meet with the Moss on its own terms.

Ali talks about the challenges that bogs present to cultural and economic ways of valuing places, and also to scientific study and understanding. They say that bogs are disregarded places. Perhaps this is why some queer artists and writers have been drawn towards peatlands. Alys Fowler’s recently published book on Peatlands makes this point when she argues that neither peatlands nor queer people are easy to categorise, but both ‘are here, persisting’ despite attempts at erasure. Ali’s poetry responds to this complexity, and they say that they don’t have a research question as such, more a web of interconnecting themes. These include the connections between queerness and bogs, as well as the experience of disabled bodies in the landscape – the ‘natural’ condition of bodily pain and the category-defying quality of wetlands. This sounds like rich territory for creative writing, and I wonder what kind of poetry emerges from all these ideas and concerns.

Our conversation takes us as far as the north-west corner of the Moss before we begin to consciously attend to the landscape that we are walking through. Here, we encounter a quick succession of dogs and walkers. I assume that it is an organised group walk, but when I ask an elderly couple at the end of the line, I realise that it is actually more of a dog traffic jam! The Moss is very busy today, despite the rain.

So far, we have stayed on the main path. But Ali tells me of their previous visit, when they came here with a friend. The two wanted to know the bog better. They walked into the middle of the Moss, following the raised bank that cuts across the peatland. At a suitably boggy place, they shared apples with the peat, noting the different metabolisms of centuries-old mire and decades-old human visitors. As we approach the boardwalk, the site reveals more of itself to us, and we look out into its centre. Or rather, shrouded in cloud and dulled by drizzle, I sense that something is being withheld.

At the far end of the boardwalk, we see a crowd making their way towards us. A lively terrier leads the pack. My short-sightedness means I have to look twice before I realise that the line of small, colourful bodies that follow are not even more dogs, they are in fact a nursery class on an outing. We wait for them to pass by. I am confident enough in my waterproof trousers to perch on a bench, but Ali stands and looks out across the heather. We chat to some of the excited three-year-olds, who are clearly unbothered by the rain.

We loop back towards the train station and pass the concrete platform, hidden in the south-east birchwood. This is the place that my nine-year old neighbour referred to as ‘the bottom of a castle’. Today, we see its potential as a stage for performance. We imagine an event that would lead people into the woods to find a performer in this clearing. Words could be woven together with the wind and the water; new relationships could be enacted; an ecological theatre could be created. Ali says that they think about performance as a way of ‘creating difficulty’ and working through it. This resonates with my work in theatre, and I am intrigued by this framing of an artform that I know well in terms of complexity and challenge.

As I leave Ali on the platform to wait for their train, they remember that they brought something for me. They hand me an A4 sheet of paper. It is a poem. It is called ‘Without rush, with rushes’, and it is written in a verse form that matches its characters with the chemical formula for tannic acid, formed as hydrogen ions are released by sphagnum moss.

In the poem, the bog is difficult to pin down. At ‘the city’s muck-edge’, the wetlands are more than a metaphor for an exhausted body in a hospital bed. When ‘a breath enters a stomata / on a sprig of bog cotton’, that exhalation is also the speaker’s. The bog and the poet are both ‘evaporation-exerted’. But they are also ‘Resistant to / being walked on.’ The poem is full of images of the natural world: from ‘soggy metabolisms’ and ‘precipitation-originating’ mosses to ‘some astonishing bird. Beloved of the sky’. But these boggy energies also slip into everyday urban life – ‘Tiny wetlands in the subway / tracks’, and ‘grouse lying sleeping by / the skirting board of those walls’. The poet looks to ‘an outburst of trees’ in the foothills (for me, recalling the remnants of forest above the towns in the lower Campsies). In these misused landscapes, there may be few signs of growth and regeneration, but the poet feels these ‘future pasts’ somewhere else – ‘I feel it elsewise, ambiently’.

Ali and their poem have helped me to encounter the bog, elsewise. While we didn’t stray far off the main path today, I am reminded of the value of making transgressive routes through a changing landscape. I think that poets are often the best people to point us in these new directions.

Oct 6, 2025

Rain is co-author of our living countryside; it is also a part of our deep internal landscape, […] complain about it as we may, rain is essential to our sense of identity as it is to our soil. (Melissa Harrison, Rain)

I am walking with my mum, Julie, and my puppy, Clyde. Mum has been staying with me this week, helping me with school runs and dog-sitting while I get started with a new academic year at the university, meeting new students and launching new courses. This morning, I am working from home and have time for a walk round the Moss after an online meeting. We head out between downpours, but there is a constant drizzle today, which hangs in the air and frames the town in a thick grey cloud. Because Lenzie Moss is a raised bog, it is sustained by rainwater. While we might grumble about dreich days like this, they bring vital nourishment and keep the wetlands wet. Without precipitation, there would be no Moss. So, with waterproofs and hiking boots on, we embrace the weather conditions and set off to walk through the rain.

It is unquestionably Autumn now. The beech trees at the front of my house are shedding their leaves and Clyde jumps to catch them as they fall. We join the Moss at the end of my road and once again, my anticlockwise route causes a raised eyebrow. Mum has a specific reason for preferring the other direction: as she joins the boardwalk at the southern birchwood, she loves to look out across the bog to see the Campsie Hills. Following this range to the east soon takes you to Kilsyth, where my Great Grandparents had a house on Banton Loch. Mum remembers Sunday drives into the Campsies as a child. I also visited the house as a baby, before my Great Grandmother Aggie Urquhart passed away. The Campsies connect my family in the other direction, too. When my son is not with me, he lives with his mum in Strathblane, at the west end of the hills. My Great Grandfather Alexander spent his childhood summers in the same village. After serving in World War II, he wrote extensively and evocatively about his early holidays. His diaries have a strong sense of nostalgia and loss, but they are full of memorable characters and hilarious stories. When I moved from our family home in Derbyshire to start university in Glasgow at the turn of the millennium, my Mum was happy I would be returning the family to this part of the country. It is a long way from home though, so I am always very grateful for the many trips they make to see us each year.

Mum usually visits with Dad and their black labrador, Henry. But Dad and Henry have stayed back home this week (mainly due to Dad’s busy social life!). As I always task my father with various complex DIY tasks, it is usually Mum who takes Henry on his daily walk. Mum and Henry have walked around the Moss together many times now, which I think gives them both a welcome break from my busy household. Today, Mum takes Clyde on his lead. This frees me up to scribble notes as we chat, but it causes Clyde some confusion as he is used to me walking him and he doesn’t quite know what to make of this change of routine. He stops and checks back frequently, often crossing my path and slowing my progress. He is now used to meeting other dogs along the way and we pause a few times for him to say hello to new friends. Apart from these fellow dog walkers, there aren’t many people out here today. The Moss is quite noisy though: the dense atmosphere sends the excited shrieks of school children across the bog; trains can be heard as they approach from the city; and we are conscious of the line of vans and cars crossing the railway bridge to the west. It feels like we are hemmed in at all sides – including by the ground and the sky.

Before we reach the boardwalk, I point out the holes that I cut in the wire fencing by the neighbouring housing estate – a job I was tasked with when I spent a morning with a group of volunteer conservationists, including Kay. The intention was to make openings for hedgehogs to pass through, but when I told Jill this, she mentioned that hedgehogs are problematic to ground nesting birds, as they love to eat their eggs. Mum and I discuss how every decision that is taken can have unforeseen consequences. She had recently seen a similar problem in New Zealand, where she and Dad had spent three months visiting my sister, Jennie. Areas where kiwis are nesting are heavily protected by traps and fences to prevent stoats and other animals predating on eggs and chicks. Earlier today, we had a family Zoom call for my brother’s birthday. Jennie and her husband Julius joined from Aukland, where they have lived for about the same time as I have been in Lenzie.

Mum says that she likes the Moss in the rain. Over the summer, she walked here on some very hot days when the ground was parched and the peat layer exposed. Mum says the bog ‘wants the rain’ and thinks that it seems ‘happier’ in this weather. She is invested in caring for this place and recognises its ecological importance and fragility.

As we walk along the pathway beside the railway line, we appreciate the way that the Moss has changed as a new season begins. We see lots of birch polypore – a bracket fungus that only grows on birch trees. The bracken is at full height and vibrantly green, even more so against the dull sky and the fading colours of the trees. Blaeberry bushes and deep purple heather remind Mum of their hillside garden, which also reckons with high acidity and elevation above the groundwater. This environment feels familiar to Mum, and she values this sense of connection to home. I hadn’t previously considered how much this is true for me, too. I grew up walking our dogs through the rain, trudging through muddy fields and woods. Now, living by Lenzie Moss means I can give my own children a similar upbringing, fostering a connection to the local environment. Walking on this damp day with Mum has reminded me of how important that is.

Sep 17, 2025

I receive a message from Andy, who has found my blog while searching for information about the recent fire in an old school building, near where he lives on Boghead Road. He tells me that around 35 years ago, he participated in an inquiry along with Bea Ray (who now has one of the paths named after her). This resulted in the preservation order that still protects the Moss from housing developments. Andy now walks his dogs on the Moss most days. He also mentions that he has ‘some views’ on the approach that has been taken to dissuade walkers deviating from the main path. I am keen to hear more, so I gratefully accept his offer to walk with me. We arrange to meet early one Wednesday morning at his home.

Andy invites me inside while he gets ready and I meet a friendly red setter called Juno. Their other red setter, Jimi, is away with Andy’s wife at the moment, so we will be accompanied by the calmer of their dogs. We exit the house through the back door into a cosy garden, which leads directly onto a parcel of grassland adjoining the Moss. We walk past the rugby fields, where a tractor is aerating the pitch. A flock of gulls roosts on the grass. Andy leads me and Juno onto the perimeter path, where I walked with Richard and Caladh a few weeks ago.

Andy tells me about moving to Lenzie in the 1980s. He grew up in the east end of Glasgow and met his wife when they were teenagers. When they first lived together, a series of upsetting incidents, including a break-in, prompted them to look outside the city. They were drawn to Lenzie because of its proximity to nature: its open skies, meadows and woods. As dog owners (they have always had red setters), they needed green space and fresh air. All of this is encapsulated in the Moss. More than once, Andy tells me, ‘this is why I live here’.

In his twenties, recently moved to the area and with a new baby, there was the prospect of major housing development on the section of Moss close to where they now live. Andy attended all the meetings and got to know Bea Ray, who has been mentioned to me several times now as a key figure in the history of the Moss. He found himself acting as witness at an inquiry into the impact of building on the site. Andy told his story to the panel, evoking the connection that local people have to the Moss. As he mentioned that he was a new parent, from the gallery, his baby boy made a well-timed cooing noise. This certainly helped their cause, but in the end, Andy says it was the environmental argument put forward by Bea that won the case. To this day, the site is recognised as ecologically important, with rare species such as bog rosemary and water voles needing special protection. As I learnt from Paul, the threat of new housing developments never goes away, but there have been a series of successes since that early campaign, culminating in 2009 when the site was designated as a Local Nature Reserve.

Andy is deeply invested in the Moss. It is an extension of his home, a place he visits almost every day, and somewhere that is full of stories and family memories. And for all these reasons, he has become quite upset by recent work undertaken. Andy takes me on a tour of the felled and broken trees that line the path round the Moss. As a method of discouraging access, Andy believes this is at best amateurish and at worst dangerous. His grandson recently asked him, ‘who killed all the trees?’ and he didn’t know how to respond. Andy has two major objections to the tree cutting: first, he believes there was ‘zero consultation’ on this specific work and that residents’ views have not been taken into consideration; second, he has researched this approach and has concluded that it is an ineffective, discredited practice. Andy has many unanswered questions about the decision-making and evidence base that led to this work. He is concerned about a lack of transparency and wonders about governance and accountability. He has also had some unpleasant encounters with the contractors undertaking the tree removal. He recounts one incident when an aggressive foreman attempted to block his way as he walked with his dog. I have heard similar stories before. These interactions have done little to bring the community on side with the conservation work here.

As we walk through the southern woodland, I have almost forgotten that Juno is with us. She is quiet and forges her own path. This is what it is like to have a well-trained, intelligent dog who can be trusted to stay close. I tell Andy about my new puppy, Clyde, who is learning quickly and has recently enjoyed his first walks on the Moss. Andy tells me that they recently lost a 30-year-old horse, also called Clyde, whom his wife had for the past 25 years, stabled up at Mugdock Park. I sense that the Moss has helped Andy with the difficult times as well as contributing to the good ones.

We arrive at the apex of the triangle of woodland that reaches out into the bog. This spot seems to draw people to it and others have mentioned it to me as a special place. Andy says that he comes here to write music. He is in a rock covers band called Shardlake and is a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter. Andy comes here with his ear buds in and works on new tunes and arrangements. He invites me to future gigs and kindly offers me a place on the guestlist, which I will accept enthusiastically! As we look out over the bog, Andy points out the conspicuous wooden fencing to the north. There are many such interventions that he feels have been poorly thought through and badly executed.

We return to the main path and pass a line of cycling school children following their instructor. Andy stresses that he is not advocating unlimited access across the bog. He understands the need to protect a sensitive environment and believes that there are ways that this could be achieved more carefully and effectively. This would start with signage and education, rather than barriers and prohibitions: especially not by destroying the trees and causing such a negative visual impact on the reserve. Andy also mentions the boardwalk as an example of positive interventions that have opened up access, protecting a fragile section of the site and making safe passage possible.

As we reach the end of our walk, I reflect on the depth of connection to the Moss that Andy and others like him have shown me. I think back to my walk with Ada, when we talked about the need for conservation of the land to include fostering relationships with it. My walk with Andy has helped me understand more about the relational complexity that characterises the Moss. Perhaps this needs to be better understood and considered when decisions are made about the site’s future.

Sep 10, 2025

A few weeks ago, there was an unexpected knock on my door. The visitor introduced herself as Sophie and she had parked her shiny Morris Minor on the street to investigate our address. Sophie was researching her partner’s family tree and had tracked down the Vary family to my home. The house was originally called Heathfield but is now known by a number, although the old name is still on the pillar on the driveway and on the glass panel above the front door. Without this, she would not have been able to find it. An unexpected encounter with a genealogy detective driving round Scotland in a classic car! This felt like the beginning of an ITV drama, and I was intrigued.

Sophie told me what little she knew about the former occupants, Jane Vary Campbell and David Sinclair Campbell. Jane was born in Glasgow in 1817, to parents Richard Vary and Flora Bell, who are documented as having an ‘irregular marriage’ on 19 May, a month after Jane’s birth. The day after the wedding, Jane was baptised. In 1839, aged 22, Jane married David, a wine and spirit merchant. They moved to the house in Lenzie at some point in the 1870s, but not before they had four sons and two daughters. These included their eldest, Richard Vary Campbell, who went on to have a distinguished career in law; and David Alexander Campbell, who followed in his father’s footsteps, presumably working for the family business. David is recorded as living at Heathfield after both his parents had died. He was eventually buried in the same place, at Auld Aisle cemetery in Kirkintilloch, a short walk north from Lenzie. Sophie has visited the grave, and she showed me a photograph.

During our conversation. I mentioned that I work at the University of Edinburgh and Sophie asked whether I knew an old friend of hers, who she had only just found out also lives in Lenzie. The friend turned out to be my colleague, Cathy, who happened to be the last person I had walked with for this project. With this amount of serendipity, it was clear that I should issue an invitation for a walk around the Moss, which Sophie received with enthusiasm. I shared my email address, and Sophie went on her way, promising to be in touch soon.

*

We meet a few weeks later when Sophie is back in Scotland (she lives in Sussex but has spent the last year in Edinburgh). Sophie flew up this morning after missing her original flight and consequently also her afternoon meeting, and we have arranged the walk for late in the day, just after sunset. It is overcast and dark when she knocks on my door again. Before we set off, I invite Sophie to see inside the house. We wander from room to room, noting how the internal architecture has changed over the years. The main and obvious difference is that the building has now been divided into two homes. I live in the lower half with the walled-in stairwell in my hallway. I wonder if there is still a grand staircase in there and assume I will never see it. This would have been a big house for a single family, and they must have had servants living here too. It seems very likely that the house would have been heated by burning peat from the Moss. I can almost smell the ‘peat reak’ as the thick smoke lingers on through history.

Having attuned to the Victorian era, we set off along Fern Avenue to the Moss. It is still light enough to see without the headtorch I have brought with me, but it is darker now than I have yet experienced on these walks. We try to imagine the darkness that David and Jane would have experienced when they lived here. It is impossible, of course. We leave the house into electric light from the streetlamps that line the avenue. The covert glow of light pollution and the intrusion of cars and planes accompany us. Fin de siècle Lenzie would have been very different. In the absence of moonlight, the town would have been drenched in darkness. The Moss would have seemed a wild and unknowable place. Families would have gathered in a single room, lit by candles or the glow from the peat fire.

The Moss still takes on a strikingly different character as nighttime takes hold. We talk with quiet voices, without the competition of busy daytime traffic. Occasionally, a glimpse of cars on distant roads reminds us that we are in the twenty first century. Several aeroplanes fly over, too. These have more prominence than usual as their lights shine out through the inky sky and their engines intrude on the silent landscape. Sophie is reminded of her earlier misadventure.

As we near the boardwalk, I turn my headtorch on to peer into the trees. A single moth is caught in the beam, and I watch it as it flies over the wildflowers. Tomorrow, I am examining Hannah Imlach’s PhD and her astonishing work with moths is very much on my mind, so this is a welcome encounter. In another moment of coincidence, I walked with Kat this morning, who set up Hannah’s doctoral project when she worked at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds nature reserve at Loch Lomond. I hope I will also be able to walk with Hannah and the moths of Lenzie Moss. Sophie and I reach the boardwalk, and we are greeted by two teenagers on an evening stroll – the only people we see at this side of the Moss this evening. Moths and teenagers. I am reminded that the Moss has different inhabitants at nighttime, and I plan to walk deeper into the night on future walks.

We emerge into the station carpark into the full glare of car headlights. We are early for Sophie’s train back into Glasgow, where she is staying at another address on the genealogy journey: the youth hostel at 7-8 Park Terrace in Glasgow. Number 9 was the home of David Cargill, with whom Kirkman Finlay, the son-in-law of Jane Vary Campbell, co-founded Burmah Oil. I wait with Sophie on the platform, and we talk about David and Jane, their family connections with Wemyss Bay and Dunkeld and Birnam, and the global industries that made them wealthy.

After the train pulls away, I walk back up towards Fern Avenue and although it is only a few hundred meters, I feel like I am walking back through centuries of history.

Sep 3, 2025

I leave my house and walk down Kirkintilloch Road to meet Kat at the station. It is early morning, and I join the procession of commuters marching wearily along the pavement. Kat is travelling today too, but she has kindly made time to join me on the Moss before catching her train to Edinburgh, where she runs Action to Protect Rural Scotland (APRS), Scotland’s longest established environmental charity. I met Kat a couple of years ago when I joined a residential for SHARE (Science, Humanities and Arts Research Exchange) at Auchinreoch, where Kat and her husband Ruedi have created a woodland retreat in the hills to the north of Kirkintilloch. Kat and Ruedi are ecologists and Kat has worked for Scottish Natural Heritage (now NatureScot) and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. She recollects doing some work with Friends of Lenzie Moss two decades ago. I am hoping to learn about peatlands and understand more about the importance of this place.

It turns out there is another reason why Kat is an ideal person to walk with. She tells me that she has also written a blog, for which she spent a year exploring Glasgow’s green belt. Over 27 excursions at weekends and on her days off, Kat covered 300 kilometres, skirting the city’s edges and offering a first-hand account of diverse and fragile environments, many of which have been impacted by heavy industry. In one entry, on discovering a bog by a birchwood between the towns of Cumbernauld and Airdrie, Kat calls herself and her walking companion ‘bog-trotting, tussock-hopping peri-urban adventurers’. I very much hope I will come to be described in such terms.

We have lots to talk about and we join the Moss with our conversation in full flow. Initially, we catch up on work and discuss our various projects, with the site itself as a backdrop. Then, in the north birchwood we step off the path and look out across the heather. Kat talks about raised bogland, stressing that this is one of the last remaining fragments of an ecosystem that was once found all over the Scottish Lowlands. She explains how raised bogs are formed by dead plants such as sphagnum moss, which can hold a tremendous amount of water. These layer up on top of each other, filling hollows carved out by ice age glaciers, and eventually the peat rises above the level of the surrounding land. This means that unlike fens, which are fed by mineral rich groundwater, bogs like Lenzie Moss rely on rainwater, which is low on nutrients. In these conditions, the slow decomposition of organic matter makes the bog acidic. Many of the species that I have encountered on these walks – the carnivorous sundews, the spiky bog heather, the rare bog rosemary, various mosses and grasses – are unique to these places. Raised bogs are of vital ecological importance and hold vast amounts of carbon. And yet, peat extraction persists at many sites, often due to irrevocable licenses than counter the government’s commitment to reach net zero by 2045. Kat describes this as ‘a total environmental disaster’.

Kat tells me about some of the bogs that she has encountered on her walks. These include Cardowan Moss, where there is ‘almost nothing left’; and Drumshangie Moss near Greengairs, which has been hit by waves of peat extraction, coal mining, waste incineration and landfill. Kat has spoken with members of local communities, who have experienced these impacts as a series of relentless ecological injustices. We examine the ariel view of some of the bogs on Google maps, and I immediately recognise the striated patterns that evidence a history of commercial peat cutting. During Kat’s wanders around the edgelands of the city, she saw many of these places. She says that the intact raised bogs pose a particular challenge as ‘they are very, very special and unusual, and next to huge quantities of people’. While this dynamic makes some of these greenbelt environments precarious, Kat’s blog also captures unexpected moments of enchantment:

The dry woodland, where the track was marked, made way for bog, and the sturdy 20 foot high birches made way for trees twisted and dwarfed by a lifetime with their roots in peaty sphagnum. We came across a flush full of flowering Bog Asphodel – a field of yellow stars – this gorgeous bog could have been anywhere in the wilds of the Highlands, Finland, or even Canada. But, instead, we were between Airdrie and Cumbernauld with the roar of the dual carriageway only 100m to the East.

I often feel this way about Lenzie Moss: it is so close to the city with the main trainline only meters away, but sometimes it feels that you could be thousands of miles away in some unchartered wilderness.

We sit on David Lee’s bench and take in the view. A kestrel hovers over the boardwalk. I have been troubled by biting midges for much of this walk and they are particularly bothersome now. Kat seems oblivious so I do my best to ignore them. She tells me about her work at APRS, which has become increasingly challenging as the right-wing media have become more adept at shutting down environmental initiatives. Two significant examples of this are the creation of a new National Park in Galloway and a bottle deposit return scheme, both of which have stalled after years of hard work. Kat feels that environmental campaigning will now need to change in an age of reactionary forces and media campaigns waged in bad faith. The charity continues to work on greenbelt protections and community empowerment in environmental projects. Kat has a lot to do and it is time for her to get to work.

As we return to a busy station car park, I have the feeling we could have walked several laps of the Moss this morning and would still have had more to discuss. Kat offers to walk again with me some time and although I still have 88 circles to complete, I will look forward to our next meeting. Kat sets off on her way east and I walk back home feeling energised and inspired. We need people like Kat, I think: people who will walk hundreds of miles to raise awareness about green spaces; people who will take on governments and champion communities; people who will keep going despite adversity, because they care.

Sep 3, 2025

For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be made known and brought to light. (Luke 8:17)

My plans change, leaving me with a free Wednesday afternoon, so I send an email to a group of people who have been in touch after reading my previous blog posts. I ask whether any of them are available at short notice to walk with me today and soon receive a reply from David. We arrange to meet outside Billington’s. I don’t know David at all, so as I wait, I wonder about everyone who walks towards me. After several people rule themselves out by passing by without making eye contact, one wanders up the hill and identifies himself with a nod. We shake hands and introduce ourselves before we set off, joining the Moss at the station carpark.

David is a fast walker, and I am happy to match his pace. Our conversation moves on quickly, too. He works in insurance, attends a church under the Anabaptist umbrella, and has three children in their twenties, two of whom are still at home. We talk of a shared experience of ‘super commuting’ between Glasgow and London. David used to be a subeditor and for a short time worked on the earliest version of The Guardian website (which I happen to read every day). He is a North Londoner and grew up near Hampstead Heath, so access to greenspaces near urban areas has always been important to him. He says that heaths and parks are the lungs of the city. Like Richard, who I walked with last week, David often looks after his daughter’s dog (theirs is a fox labrador called Psalm) and while she isn’t with him today, they are regularly out on the Moss for exercise. Psalm is a fetcher and spends much of these excursions chasing sticks and bringing them back, covering significantly more distance than whoever is walking her. With a such a busy life, full of work, family commitments, and dog walking, the Moss is a place that David can come to slow down and reset. It means a lot to him.

When we reach the part of the boardwalk where I sat with Cathy watching the roe deer playing in the heather, we look out across the bog. David points out the sections of fencing at the far side. He is unconvinced by the need to manage access in this way. When the fences were being constructed, David spoke with the contractors and they claimed they were for safety, citing an incident many years ago when a child had to be rescued from the bog. This is the first time I have heard this explanation; I was told by Jackie that access was being discouraged to protect the fragile peat layer from erosion. David doubts that there was any real evidence used to justify these interventions. He says that he has always walked across the bog, but that he does so responsibly. With very few walkers diverting from the main pathway, and those who do taking care and sticking to the well-established routes, David doesn’t see why there needs to be such an effort and investment to block off paths and prevent access.

I understand that the barriers and borders can seem excessive, but I have learnt that small amounts of footfall over long periods of time can cause real damage to the bog. My own opinion on this thorny issue changes a little every time I complete a circle. Today, we pass a father with a sleeping toddler in a pushchair, a couple of joggers, teenagers on their way back to school, and several dogwalkers. Almost all of them follow the main pathway round the perimeter of the bog. One walks along the raised bank of the old railway line, his husky leading the way, seeming pure white in the sunshine. David’s internal map of the Moss is a network of interconnected paths, and he rarely follows the same route, but there are places he often returns to.

We turn off the boardwalk and David offers to show me a place that I might not have visited before. We follow the path for a while and then suddenly leave it at a point that he clearly knows well, but which I will struggle to find again. After walking a short way into the birchwood, we reach a clearing marked by a fallen branch. David steps over it and uses it as a seat. He talks about the sense of peace and calm that this part of the Moss offers him. He also encounters it as a spiritual place: it is a part of the Moss that he comes to for silent prayer. When he is walking with Psalm, she anticipates these moments, becoming quiet and still while David gathers his thoughts. David tunes in to the environment, slows down and listens to God. Sometimes, he senses meaning in the wind through the trees and the passage of deer. I tell him that while I am not religious myself, I share a sense of peace that for me arises from a connection to wild places.

As we return to the main path, we say farewell and go our separate ways. I walk the last few feet alone, back towards the turn off to Fern Avenue. While there is nobody else around, I stop for a moment. I breathe in and listen. I have to be aware and in tune; I have to be present. If I can do this, then the world might tell me something. I am searching for a sign. Then, the wind causes a dappled light to move in the bushes, and I turn to see hundreds of pure white flowers turned to where I stand. They are hedge bindweed – moments of light and beauty popping out of the tangle of nettles. If I am looking for meaning, these will do nicely. Later, I read that this plant represents an unyielding spirit – its strong roots and delicate flowers symbolising a connection between strength and fragility. I realise that I walked past this spot already, when David and I passed it by earlier, talking about the Moss rather than being present in it. By breaking from the walk and pausing in the clearing, we have shifted our mode of engagement with the environment. The things that went unnoticed now reveal themselves; those who stop to look will see what was always there.

Aug 20, 2025