Nitshill Disaster

For various reasons my day off this week was swapped to Monday. The wee man has a half-day at nursery, so this left me at a loose end for the afternoon. I decided to take a run on the bike out to the Barrhead dams.

And that's when the problems started. About a mile along the road to the dams I went over a drain with a pothole next to it, and an inner tire burst. Not, sadly, a small puncture but two inch-long tears. With no spare inner (won't be making that mistake again) I had to walk back to the nearest station, Nitshill. Not the prettiest part of the world it must be said. Standing there, it turned out the the line was closed because someone had smacked some vehicle into a railway bridge on the line, and they had to check it out. Half an hour of extra standing at the station later, a train finally turned up, and made it back home. So not a great day.

One thing did keep it in perspective though: at the entrance to the train station, near the local war memorial, is a small, simple memorial to the Nitshill Mining Disaster of 1851: 61 souls perished. Third-worst in Scottish history, after the Blantyre and Udston tragedies.