Our Director, Kat, is taking part in the Royal Scottish Geographical Society ‘Inspiring People’ lecture series this year. She will be doing a seven-date tour, sharing her experiences walking Glasgow’s Green belts.
Supporters of APRS will have been following Kat’s adventures as she set off from her home near Kilsyth, to circumnavigate the 11 designated Green Belts around Greater Glasgow. The aim was to learn about the Green Belt firsthand, see how people use them, and meet some of the campaigners working to protect their local green spaces.
It turned out to be a peri-urban adventure: finding wildlife havens among the landfills, quarries and golf courses, while negotiating routes over ground criss-crossed with dual carriageways, motorways and railways. Kat found her way, celebrating every culvert, on a 300km route taking her around Cumbernauld, Airdrie, Wishaw and Larkhall, past East Kilbridge and Paisley and then over the Clydemuirshiel hills to Weymss Bay. Picking up again north of Helensburgh she then headed home via Renton, Faifley and the outskirts of Bearsden.
In the lectures for the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, Kat shares her close affinity with the OS maps of Greater Glasgow and will take us to some of the unique places she discovered on her walk, and introduce us to the communities campaigning to protect their Green Belts.
Some of the speakers in the RSGS series have climbed the world’s 8000m peaks, walked across Antarctica, or cycled round the world. But this talk is a paen to the adventure to be found in exploring the unknown places which lie metres from your commuter route, or down a bank from a housing estate, discovering that the value of Scotland’s access legislation lies in our right to walk in the countryside on our doorstep.
“The RSGS lecture series may be known for inspirational stories of adventure and endurance from the four corners of the earth, but, in walking Glasgow’s Green Belts, I have discovered that there is adventure to be found in the most familiar places.” said Kat
“I am really looking forward to sharing some of the unusual places I visited and the people I met on my 300km route around the periphery of Glasgow.
“I have always loved maps and in this peri-urban adventure, I have found so much joy in the simplicity of studying a map and then heading off to forge a route between two points. I hope that I can, in my lecture, celebrate the incredible freedom that we have in Scotland, thanks to our access rights, to wander and to explore, wherever the map leads.”
Dates:
21 October, 730pm – Dumfries
Easterbrook Hall, The Crichton, Gilchrist Room, Bankhead Road, Dumfries, DG1 4TA BOOK HERE
22 October, 730pm – Galashiels
Borders College, Scottish Borders Campus, Nether Road, Galashiels, TD1 3HE BOOK HERE
23 October, 730pm – Ayr
Kyle Academy School, Overmills Road, Ayr, KA7 3LR BOOK HERE
24 October, 730pm – Helensburgh
Victoria Halls, Sinclair Street, Helensburgh, G84 8TU BOOK HERE
18 November, 730pm – Kirkcaldy
The Old Kirk, 40 Kirkwynd, Kirkcaldy, KY1 1EH BOOK HERE
20 November, 215pm – Edinburgh
40 George Square, Lecture Theatre A, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH8 9JX BOOK HERE
20 November, 730pm – Glasgow
The Glasgow Academy, The Watson Auditorium, Colebrooke Street, Glasgow, G12 8HE BOOK HERE
