From the ridiculous to the sublime

It wasn't the best of mornings.  I needed to go to Glasgow to take my motorbike helmet back to the shop because it has a problem.  If I motorbiked it I would've had to ride home in my old helmet, but it was icy cold first thing and the roads are covered in grit and salt.  Helmets are annoyingly large, incompressible lumps of plastic to deal with.  After an hour inventing a way to carry it on my bicycle it was late morning but I set off for the railway station.  Not fifteen minutes out of the house, my tyre went flat, and I didn't have my pump or a spare tube with me because I was trusting Mirabel's chunky touring tyres too much.  I trudged all the way home again, fumed and drank tea.

Fortunately Mum and Dad were free so we decided to have a car trip to Glasgow instead, that we might make a day of it.  The M8 through Glasgow is broken because the concrete has stopped working, and the traffic was awful.  But we made it, and I have left my helmet with the shop for them to arrange a repair of some kind.  I hope it doesn't take too long because I need it!  After @BikerBabe's travails with her own helmetry, well, I guess the world needed to find balance again.

Escaping the melee of Glasgow we ended up at a garden centre at Mugdock Country Park, where I have never been before, for a good old tuck in that was more of an early tea than a late lunch.  Not too far to the east was the town of Kirkintilloch, so it would have been a crime not to visit.  We made our way to Peel Park (actually Victoria Park but it seems hardly anyone calls it that) because I remembered it had a bandstand and some gates to look at.

And here we are!  This is a Lion Foundry model no.25 bandstand from 1905.  It was refurbished in 2006 and unveiled by none other than Magnus Magnusson.  A little distance behind is the Hudson Fountain, a Lion Foundry model no.41, the same model in fact as the one I visited in Kilsyth last year.  The aforementioned gates are part of a splendid WW1 memorial that was erected in 1924.

It was dark by the time we got back home, whereupon we had a much needed brew.