CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Infrastructure

BOrrowstounNESS

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  1. gembo
    Member

    Has much of interest to the members

    Steam trains
    Iron foundry still? Making manhole covers?
    Industrial rev
    Bricks
    Art Deco ish cinema

    Then the climb from sea level up to Linlithgow then onwards to the Bathgate alps and torphicen then west to Westfield and Avon bridge and over the top to Blackridge then up to Harthill then higher over the moor to fauldhouse and the col du Climpy up, up to Braehead then down to the carstairs esker, the apple pie bakery Carnwath then home to bed. A boy can dream of such climbs.

    Posted 11 years ago #
  2. amir
    Member

    Any cake?

    Posted 11 years ago #
  3. kaputnik
    Moderator

    All good, lots more good heritage in that area to explore. The adventurous route is round the coast to Blackness.

    Posted 11 years ago #
  4. Cyclingmollie
    Member

    For industrial heritage you'd have to take in Wilsontown.

    Posted 11 years ago #
  5. crowriver
    Member

    Don't forget to pick up some frozen venison at the Beecraigs visitor centre after a wee climb up from 'Lithgae. The deer sometimes peer over the hedge inquisitively. Nice public loos too.

    Posted 11 years ago #
  6. acsimpson
    Member

    The adventurous route is round the coast to Blackness.

    If by adventurous you mean includes portages.

    Posted 11 years ago #
  7. chdot
    Admin

    "If by adventurous you mean includes portages."

    Yes, CS doesn't plan a route -

    http://edinburgh.cyclestreets.net/journey/40615087

    Dotted line visible.

    Think there are (still) plans to improve - but more as a walking route than a cycle one.

    Well worth going that way as part of 'round the Forth, as close as you can get'.

    Posted 11 years ago #
  8. kaputnik
    Moderator

    If by adventurous you mean includes portages.

    Indeed!

    Posted 11 years ago #
  9. gembo
    Member

    Kinneil House in Bo'ness has won a Scottish heritage Angel prize, (big house and museum where much of James watt's steam engine work carried out)

    as has mark Cranston of jetherit for his collection of 2300 different Scottish bricks

    Posted 8 years ago #
  10. DaveC
    Member

    Every time I climb up through that House at Bo'ness I think 'Kenneil' too!!

    Posted 8 years ago #
  11. Mandopicker101
    Member

    Kinneil House is well worth a visit if you can find a day it's open. If nothing else, the Renaissance murals within the 'palace' (sticky-out bit on the north) are really quite stunning. The towers apparently contain fine marble staircases, although Joe Public doesn't usually gain access to those parts of the building.

    Also worth a look is nearby Kinneil Church- one legend has it that St Serf stood here when he lobbed his staff across the Forth. It duly landed in Culross and the rest is history. There's some fine early 16th century graveslabs. The big tussocky area of ground south of the church is the site of the original village of Kinneil, apparently depopulated by plague and then duly cleared by the Hamilton's who fancied a sweeping vista of open parkland rather than a bunch of Baldrick-a-likes scratching out a living. Said peasants were decamped to a new settlement suitably far away on a headland, which the natives called Borrowstouness (Burgh Town On The Headland).

    Look carefully on molehills and you can still find fragments of pottery. The broad, gentle depression running westwards through the meadow is the ditch associated with the Antonine Wall (2nd C AD Roman frontier).

    I confess to a) being a native and b) being a former archaeologist...

    Posted 8 years ago #
  12. PS
    Member

    @Mandopicker1 There's no escape. Once an archaeologist, always an archaeologist. :D

    Posted 8 years ago #
  13. Mandopicker101
    Member

    @PS - so....you can take the boy out of the dirt, but you can't take the dirt out of the boy?

    I do find myself idly looking at lumps and bumps in fields as I go past and start noting head-dykes, ha-ha's, random bits of rig etc. Its the being outdoors I miss most...

    Posted 8 years ago #
  14. gembo
    Member

    Hippodrome cinema also must see in the Bo'

    Posted 8 years ago #

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