KEN SMITH AT LARGE

Journey of discovery in the fabled footsteps of St Mungo

GLASGOW exists because of a river. No, not that one. Not the Clyde. Not the one that thrills us and fills us with pride. No, I’m talking about the Molendinar. In fact it is so trivialised we even use the diminutive term “burn” to describe it.

Although most Glaswegians will have heard of it, few will know where it is, or even have seen it. So, why is it important? Last week I walked the length of the Molendinar from source to Glasgow’s city centre to find out. I have to admit, though, that this was no arduous task, like following the Nile through the heat of Africa for weeks on end. This only took three or four hours. And it began in Stepps. Pay attention to the spelling – not the rolling steppes of Russia, but Stepps on the north-east of Glasgow. I met a dozen other ramblers who were walking the Molendinar as part of Glasgow’s St Mungo Festival. You may simply know St Mungo as Glasgow’s patron saint, but delve deeper and you realise that, without Mungo, Glasgow may not have existed.

If you leave Stepps station, and avoid all the houses being built, you are actually in wetlands. Scrubland that will not have changed from hundreds of years ago when Mungo came here. Walk leader Kate Mooney explained that he had left Culross to bury a holy man named Fergus, and his route brought him down to the Molendinar.

You can see why when you stand there. There are no hills or obvious landmarks to aim for. Instead you would walk along a riverbank. And here in the wetlands the Molendinar begins, trickling in to what is now called Frankfield Loch. Not the largest of lochs, but a haven nevertheless for ducks, snipe and lapwing. We call it a loch but geologists describe it as merely a kettle pond – a hole left when the ice age glaciers retreated.

From there the Molendinar makes its way to the larger, more famous Hogganfield Loch. We can be very compartmentalised people, Glaswegians. If we are from the west end we travel little to the east end or the south side, and vice versa. So it is easy to forget, if you are not from the east end, how attractive Hogganfield Loch is. I look across it and see a beach. A beach in Glasgow? I wonder if I’m imagining it but, no, on the signposts is listed “Beach”. Not that there is anyone sunbathing at this time of year, but a beach it definitely is.

In fact, Hogganfield, Frankfield and other kettle ponds out in the east end, stretching to Coatbridge, from the Seven Lochs Wetland Park which is slowly being developed to provide miles of walking and cycle routes in the east end. As the old industries disappear, we are finally making something positive out of the land that is left.

Kate, our walk leader, reminds us that this whole area used to be covered in rhubarb fields. Rhubarb, she says, was part of the staple diet in Glasgow, particularly as it flourished at a different season from the apple crop. One of the other walkers recalled: “We used to take a poke of sugar from home, and come up here, snap off a bit of rhubarb and dip it in the sugar. Delicious.” Rhubarb though could not match the financial return of housing, and the rhubarb fields, including the well known Pinkerton Plantation, were bulldozed.

From Hogganfield Loch, the Molendinar goes under Cumbernauld Road. And this is when the detective work begins. Much of the Molendinar is now underground so you have to know your old maps to know where it has gone. We peer through some fencing at the side of Cumbernauld Road and see the Molendinar. OK. it’s not that impressive. Just a barely moving stream. But we head on. Kate takes us into Riddrie Cemetery which is cut in half by the Molendinar. This is the most open stretch of the river you can see.

From there we head though Riddrie, Royston and Blackhill where we lose sight of the river until we come to the aptly named Molendinar Community Centre. It is a grey building with most windows covered in shutters, but inside there are gyms, classes, an IT suite, birthday parties, and a real feeling that it is centres like this which keep the housing schemes of Glasgow alive.

There is even a stretch of the Molendinar which has popped up for public view just across the road. Then we walk through Provan, not the prettiest part of Glasgow admittedly with its gasworks, and industrial scarred land. Somehow we edge our way around a slip-road onto the M8 on

‘‘ We used to take a poke of sugar from home, and come up here, snap off a bit of rhubarb and dip it in the sugar. Delicious

the wall of which is a plaque stating: “Below this point flows the Molendinar Burn”.Thousands drive past it every day without noticing.

Kate leads on through backstreets. I’m lost. No idea where we are, but suddenly we pop up on Alexandra Parade, not far from the old Wills tobacco factory. It’s the homeward stretch as we walk towards the Necropolis, Glasgow Cathedral and the Tennent’s Brewery.

Originally Tennent’s took its water from the Molendinar, which is really the point of how the Molendinar made Glasgow. After following the river down, Mungo stopped here and set up a community. Mills were set up on the Molendinar to provide trade. There were breweries, which were important, as the beer, light in alcohol, was drunk by everyone as it was safer than drinking water which had not been boiled.

Finally the Molendinar dribbles in to the Clyde, unseen, under the road near the High Court building at Saltmarket. And here is the Molendinar’s claim to fame. Further down the Clyde was Govan, a far larger town than Glasgow. But the stories of the miracles that made Mungo a Saint gave Glasgow far greater importance in a country then dominated by religion.

So,if Mungo hadn’t followed the Molendinar, we would probably be living in a larger Govan rather than Glasgow, which you can decide is either a good thing or a bad thing.