River Kelvin Walkway

What a lovely place for a walk. This walkway is a beautiful place for a stroll or bike ride regardless of the season. My only caution is that it can get muddy so be careful especially if you are walking dogs. If you are a walker watch out as sometimes the cyclist pass quite quickly. For a loo you’ll have to pop up to the botanics. Being down by the river will help you escape and forget about life in he city. You’ll also find that there is a small outdoor workout space off the path so you can burn some extra calories if your walk isn’t challenging enough.

The Kelvin Walkway is one of my favourite wee escapes from the murmur of Byres Road. I’ve walked the length of it a couple of times, it’s easy to forget that it’ll take you right out of central Glasgow & into the suburbs.
You start at the Stewart memorial fountain in Kelvingrove Park on under Gibson St and first make contact with the river by Inn Deep. Now at this point you may wish to consider the job done, why not after all you’ve just arrived at one heck of a pub, but let’s keep going.
On past Inn Deep under the bridge & up the small hill onto the pathway which takes you on towards the old mill and Botanics exit. I really love this stretch, as it bends away from Gibson St, you get the feeling that you’re leaving the busy streets behind you, it’s both exciting and calming. After the water mill, you pass the outdoor gym & Friends of the River Kelvin meeting point (the shed thing) and come to a fork in the road. You can choose to either return to civilisation (the left hand path) or climb the hill & go off road as the path looses the tarmac for a short stretch. Once on the other side of the slope there’s another chance to take a left towards civilisation or continue on into the wilds of Maryhill.
As you climb, you pass a towerblock, which always seems deserted. You cross over a road (look both ways kids!) and return to the path which takes you passed Maryhill locks, under a huge viaduct & on upwards towards Garscube estate.
From here, you climb before entering a woodland, which has a lot of cool wee pathway leading off into Narnia (and the shire too). Once you reach the main road you can consider it a job done & go back to Inm Deep or cross over through the science park, hang a left over the hill & enter the real jungle! There’s huge branches, quick mud (the Scottish equivalent of quicksand) and plagues of midges. From here on you just follow the river on out into the wilds of Dunbartonshire. If you’ve never got this far then I’d really recommend it, it’s an easy way to get away from it all, if like me you’re sans car. What I’ll say is that if you want to keep going onto the Allander way, all you need to do is follow the course of the river, but be warned, there’s little to no clear path in places & sensible shoes are required (you will get wet). If you’re on a bike be aware that you’ll be doing a good bit of carrying once you cross over to the Allander side, it’s probably better to just take the main road down to the pathway opposite Dobbies.

For me, the Kelvin Walkway is the highlight of the West End and one of the main reasons I love living here. It’s just a wonderful corridor of greenery to wander through and transport yourself away from traffic noise and pollution. Mind you, it wasn’t always like this — in Victorian times and before the Kelvin was very much a working river and was extremely polluted, and it’s only really in the latter years of the 20^th Century that it was properly cleaned up and transformed into a walking route.
The Kelvin is Glasgow’s ‘other’ river and I recommend the book of the same name by Alex Matheson if you want to know more about the history of the river.
The walkway is great for accessing the Botanic Gardens or Kelvingrove Park, and a pleasant walk into town is to take the walkway round the back of the Museum & Art Gallery then cut through Kelvingrove Park and along Clairmont Gardens and Woodside Place, which brings you out nicely at Charing Cross without encountering much traffic.
I live within a mile of its downstream efflux into the Clyde, and I just adore the fact that I could step out of my front door and end up in Fort William by following the Kelvin Walkway to Milngavie and then joining the West Highland Way. How does Bilbo’s song go?
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
Definitely on my bucket list — I may not make it as far as Fort William but Milngavie station is a definite possibility!

The Kelvin Walkway has been a constant in my life for as long as I remember, and I still love it to this day. It’s the heart of my Glasgow.
As a kid, one of our favourite places to go was the play park at the Ha’penny bridge section. I have fond memories of mud pies, pooh sticks, and cracking both my chin and my head open from falling off the swings and the high bars. Thankfully, city councils have discovered softer surfaces with which to cover childrens’ play areas and while the play equipment is long gone, and it’s now kitted out with keep fit equipment — eh, nice try Glasgow Council. However, the kids still seem to love it just as much as I did.
Moving on to the present day, there are just so many varied sections to the walkway– from the relative wildness along the river, to the ruins of the old flint mill, to the carefully manicured Arboretum at the North Kelvinside end.
I generally come into the park from the Finnieston end, and walk or cycle straight through onto the walkway. Did you know that the section just before the Kelvinbridge Underground car park used to be a train line, and had associated works coming from it? Check out the photos online, it’s fascinating.
Sometimes, we might stop at Inn Deep for a beer in the beer cave, and play a game of ‘spot the hipster’ — which takes about half a second because there’s generally tons of them drinking nice beer and growing their beards.
Then comes my favourite little section — from Inn Deep to the ruins of the old mill. Fellow foragers, you can get many many goodies on the banks here in spring and summer. There is an abundance of Japanese Knotweed (yes it’s edible and it’s very much like rhubarb), wild garlic, three cornered leek, Himalayan balsam, garlic mustard — oh my, there is so much to be enjoyed here. Oh and then there’s ‘echo bridge’ — there is some sort of cool fact about the echo you get if you shout in this tunnel — it’s a really long echo or something like that, I can’t quite remember, but shouting ‘echo’ is good fun anyway.
If you keep going along the walkway, you can get all the way out to Milgnavie. The walkway runs basically parallel with Maryhill Rd, and passes Dawsholm Park, the canal locks, and the Maryhill Science Park. Normally I cycle this section — and it is so beatiful on a crisp winter morning. The trees and the steep banks running down to the river are just outstandingly beautiful with the right weather.
One of the fantastic things about the walkway is that it gives you an easy route to many other cool places to cycle — Dawsholm Park is great with a mountain bike — there’s a brilliant view over the city from the top of the park, and if you get onto the canal at the locks, you can go for miles and miles in either direction. And if you don’t want to go that far, once you’re at the Queen Margaret Drive end, you can double back and go back through the Botanics, or have a wander round the Arboretum, which is a completely different landscape.
The Kelvin Walkway is one of Glasgow’s best features — a wee bit of leafy freshness and wildness right through the heart of the west end.