Lost in Lennox: Lennox Forest & Castle

Gravel track in Lennox Forest

As another one of my lockdown routes, I decided to have a look at a curious gap in my knowledge to the north of Glasgow. Although the road to Lennoxtown is one I've ridden many times on the way to some Crow Road torture, I'd never done much looking around. Just to the south of Lennoxtown itself sits the Lennox Forest, nestled within which are a fairly scary old psychiatric hospital, and the Celtic football club training ground. 

Like any quest for gravel riding, my first obstacle was trying to find an interesting way to get there from the city. My route of choice for this ride was to nip up to the Forth and Clyde Canal at Maryhill and head out towards Torrance - not exactly rugged off-road riding, but still an improvement on tarmac. From Torrance, I'd head up towards the waterfalls at Blairskaith on some pleasant single lane back roads, before beginning the climb proper up to Lennox Forest. 

When the track leaves the tarmac, it's a bit of a hard haul up some seriously rough and broken up land rover track at first, before turning left and heading up some even rougher quad ruts and straight up the hill. The CGR coped well, allowing me to carefully keep myself balanced and moving forward. The big 11-42 cassette was great for hauling me up the hill, but the hard part was trying to stop the back wheel from spinning on the loose surface. 

Behind-bars view north to the Campsie Fells

Once over the top of the first climb, the track levelled out into some fairly pleasant forest road, making for easy progress before dropping down towards Lennoxtown. Like a big wean, I took maximum enjoyment from flying through the big wide corners with a daft big grin on my face. The rough and loose forest road would eventually change to some rather interesting broken up tarmac, and signs of more ornamental features by the road suggested there may be civilisation approaching.

The ruins of Lennox Castle

The road took an abrupt turn between some narrow walls and ahead of me was the ruined shell of Lennox Castle. While built in the early nineteenth century as a private home, the building was later used as a wartime military hospital, and eventually as a notorious psychiatric hospital before closing in 2002. I didn't fancy attempting any of that urbex stuff, so decided just to carry on along the loop that I'd laid into my Garmin earlier in the day. The route would take me down to the fringes of Lennoxtown itself, before turning back uphill again, passing the Celtic training ground. With the coronavirus lockdown, there wasn't much activity out on the all-weather pitches.

Narrower path loop in the woods

On the way back up to the top of Lennox Forest, I passed a few wee lines leading off into the woods, but nothing that looked especially worth a ride. I did venture down a wee constructed path that wasn't on my Garmin plan, but it only ended up looping me back onto the main track again after a pleasant enough wee spin. The main thing that confused me was why there was such a beatifully made but utterly pointless bit of pathwork out in the middle of nothing very much at all.

This bit looked like it had the potential to be fun

After nearly missing my turning, I followed a wee narrow ribbon of singletrack back downhill away from the woods to the south again. I always get a wee flutter of excitement on seeing downhill singletrack stretching out ahead of me, but sadly this time it only led to a few hundred metres of soggy bog, before eventually leading back to the waterfall at Blairskaith. My return route to Glasgow would involve having a bit of a nosy down some fairly enjoyable wee country lanes and back in via Balmore Road.

Notes:

• Ross: Ribble CGR 725
• 47km with 670m elevation
• Nav: Garmin Edge 530, Strava Routes
• Strava Activity
• Photos: iPhone 8 & VSCO Cam App