2025-01-30 55 -4
Thu 30 Jan 2025 in 55,-4: 55.8476752, -4.3793128 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox |
Contents
Location
In an open space and/or back garden in Ralston.
Participants
Plans
KerrMcF
Conveniently, Daniel and I had already planned to meet up on this day, so when the coordinates were announced to be roughly halfway between us, I messaged him asking if he'd like to fit that into our plans. He said yes, so I began looking into timings with public transport. I had university classes starting at 2pm, and we wanted to have lunch near to the university before then, so we were aiming to be sat down at around 1pm. This meant reaching the geohash ideally no later than 12pm, and likely meeting up at 11:15am. My journey into Paisley would be longer than Daniel's due to the nature of the train lines and bus routes, so I was planning to leave my house shortly before 10am.
Expedition
KerrMcF
Mild TW: mention of vomiting. Skip the indented paragraphs to avoid this.
- My day began exactly as planned; I got out of bed, got dressed, and had breakfast, all with plenty of time to spare. So much time, in fact, that I decided I would clean out my water bottle, just to make sure it was freshened up a little. I'll spare you the details of what was a rather uninteresting task, but I ended up losing track of time a little and having to rush for my bus. I've previously been a little later than anticipated when heading for scheduled public transport, and I usually solve this issue by simply running, rather than walking. The run isn't too far, and I'm not dreadful at running, but I've never been keen on longer-distance, so I try not to push myself further than I'm comfortable. This usually works well, maybe needing just a moment or two to catch my breath afterwards, and I had no reason to expect otherwise on this morning. That wording's a little ominous, isn't it?
- I reached the bus stop and pulled out my phone to check the location of the bus. It was still a decent distance away, so I probably hadn't needed to run after all. I used the time I had to rest a little and cool down. It would be a little easier to do so if I wasn't wearing four layers, as well as a backpack, but I'd done so before. This time felt different though. It was taking a bit longer than usual to recover from the exercise, and I wasn't feeling too great physically. I thought that I should clear my throat to see if that helped in any manner, maybe just getting some more air circulating would improve the situation. Big mistake. Immediately after coughing, I felt nauseous. Incredibly nauseous. The kind where you really have to try not to throw up, which I was successful in doing, at least for the first minute or so. I think it had just been too soon after I had eaten my breakfast, or maybe I'd run a little too fast, but I ended up vomiting on the pavement. Quite quickly after doing so, I felt fully better. In fact, this change was so sudden that when a stranger approached me to ask if I was alright, I was able to engage in fully normal discussion. That seemed to throw him off a bit, as he attempted to inform me that I'd just been sick (really? wow!) but he seemed comfortable that I was not in any danger (/wasn't a drunken adolescent who posed further risk to themselves) and wished me well. Feeling significantly better, I pressed on with the expedition.
My bus arrived shortly afterwards, and I got on board. It wasn't the route I would usually take at that time of day, so it felt a little bit unusual. There are only two buses that (usually) go through that area, namely the 15 and 17. The 15 is great; a half-hourly service that takes me essentially from my doorstep straight to my university. The 17 on the other hand is just alright. It goes along a route that I don't have much interest in, and is really just a slightly faster way to get into the city centre, where the 15 also goes to. For this specific trip, it was useful, but I tend to also find that the drivers of the 17 are noticeably less friendly than those of the 15. The driver on this specific bus almost drove past me waiting at the bus stop, and in fact did drive past other people at later stops. Buses do that if they're full, understandably so, but only half of the seats on the bus were taken, so it seemed he simply wasn't as focused as he should've been. Regardless of the mannerisms and behaviours of the bus driver, I made it to where I wanted to go, so I can't really complain.
The bus had arrived a little earlier than I had planned for, giving me plenty of time to buy a ticket and locate my train. I was only travelling for one stop; Glasgow Central to Paisley Gilmour Street. It cost me £4.60, which feels a little sneaky for such a short trip, but that's the reason I got the (free) bus into the city centre, rather than the somewhat faster train. My train left exactly on time at 11:00am, and as I found out through messaging with Daniel, he arrived in Paisley shortly afterwards. The journey took at most 15 minutes, and I met up with Daniel just outside the station. The last time that Daniel and I had been in this area, we were roughly 4 hours deep into a 6-hour walk. That was a year and a half ago, and we've done another similar one since, but it still all felt so familiar. Last time, we had walked along Paisley Road West from the east to the west, but this time we would be travelling in the opposite direction. The walk was likely due to take 45 minutes, according to Google, but actually only took about 25. We reached Ralston Community Sports Centre - the location of the geohash - at around 11:45am, and after checking that the land was not signposted as private, made our way to the geohash itself.
Unfortunately, due to the location of the geohash being directly on somebody's fence, it looked a little dodgy to walk up to it, stop, look at my phone for a bit, then turn and walk away. It looked even worse when we realised that out of all the houses that back onto the open space, this was the only one without a row of trees or bushes blocking sight into the garden. Fortunately, nobody seemed to be around to raise the alarm, and we were able to successfully get close enough to the geohash. Satisfied, and having taken photos for proof, we began to head towards the bus stop to continue our day.
From here, the plan was to get the bus to Cessnock subway station, then get the subway to Hillhead station, then walk to Nando's and have lunch. This went exactly as planned, with the subway ticket costing us £1.85 each, significantly more reasonable than the train prices. Lunch was good, as was chatting with Daniel, and soon we began to head in the direction of the university. Daniel used to be a course-mate of mine at the uni, so we used to see each other almost every day. It felt a little weird being with him in the area but not having him join me in my classes, but he was insistent that he did not want to attend a Statistical Models lecture, which was absolutely fair enough. We parted ways shortly before 2pm, which is where this expedition officially ends, and I headed to my first lecture of the day with a different friend (who will hopefully join me on a future expedition, I'm keen to get as many people involved in geohash as I can). The rest of the day went as planned. My lectures were interesting (Multiple Regression models followed by the psychology of Expertise through the lenses of chess and medicine) and I got a convenient lift home from my mum as she left work, saving me about 30 minutes on the unfortunately very slow evening bus.
Overall, the expedition was very successful. I really do enjoy days like this, where it ends up feeling like two entirely different days in one due to how filled with activity they are. Seeing Daniel again was nice, and hopefully I'll get to do so again in the near future. In terms of achievements, I don't believe I've unlocked anything new other than 2^5 successful expeditions. Funnily enough, my 2^4th successful achievement was also in the Paisley area, but that is where that pattern immediately ends. I could have got a nice Sightseeing achievement regarding Barshaw Park, but didn't think about it beforehand. A Tale of Two Hashes is tempting for Ralston, especially considering that I know of a street by the same name near to me, but I think I'll pass on that one due to the complexity of the achievement as it currently stands and the necessary continuous monitoring that it brings.
Photos
Achievements
KerrMcF and Daniel earned the Land geohash achievement
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KerrMcF and Daniel earned the Public transport geohash achievement
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KerrMcF earned the Two to the N achievement
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Daniel earned the Two to the N achievement
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History of the Location
Ralston began as the feudal estates of Ralphistoun, or Ralph's town, named after the Earl of Fife's youngest son. The family had acquired the lands at the beginning of the 12th century, and ownership continued until the early 18th. Several exchanges later, in the 19th century, the land was sold as farmland. Around the same time, road traffic had increased due to the growth of the textile industry. The main road at the time was a simple dirt track, which was not necessarily appropriate for that level of use. As such, a new road was built through the area, which became the main road Daniel and I walked along during our expedition. After the initial development of villas along this main route, developers began planning a village as a more rural alternative for the textile merchants operating in Paisley. During this development, most of the area's farmhouses were destroyed, including many around the area of the geohash. One farmhouse, Rylees, is cited as being located on the bend of Atholl Crescent, just north of the current Ralston Community Sports Centre. Another, The Furnace, is described on Wikipedia (and at ralstoncommunitycouncil.org) as "originally number 18 Penilee Road". The current 18 Penilee Road is located approximately 15m north of the geohash itself.
A map dated to 1858 appears to show the geohash as located within Rylees farm, but comparisons of the area are difficult. It appears that the outline of Rylees farm follows the rough curvature of the current Auchmannoch Avenue and Buchlyvie Road (an interesting call-back to 2025-01-20 56 -4). If this is the case, then the geohash would have previously fallen onto the land of this farm. An updated map from 1896 doesn't appear to show much change to the area of the geohash, although I was immediately drawn to the nearby Kerr Hill (an interesting call-back to, well, me). 13 years later, we can see a stark contrast between the area of Paisley and Ralston, and the reason for the desire of the road development through Ralston can be easily inferred.
Interestingly, when comparing the area in 1934 and in 1938, we can see that the boundaries of the land have changed in a rather short space of time. A new school has been built on the area, corresponding to the current Ralston Primary School, and a building can now be seen near to the area of the geohash. This building matches the shape of the rightmost portion of the current Ralston Community Sports Centre, but lacks what is potentially a further extension to the building. When viewing Google Earth satellite imagery dated from 2002-12-31, we can see that the building on the current land is shaped identically to that on the 1938 map. It is unclear whether the building has always been used as a sports centre, but the 2002 imagery appears to indicate that the land usage is that of recreational sport. The imagery from 2009-05-31 seems to show improvements being carried out on the building and general area, with the existing football pitch and building having been completed by 2011-04-29. An additional grass pitch appears in 2016-05-09, but this is gone by 2017-06-18. In 2019-03-31, two smaller pitches appear, and are gone by 2019-10-27. From then until now, the land remains relatively consistent.
Ralston Community Sports Centre recently underwent a conflict with Kelburne Hockey Club, who had applied to the council for private ownership of the land. Kelburne's request was rejected by Renfrewshire council, and at the end of 2022, Kelburne submitted an appeal against this decision. As of 2023-03-22, the council's decision was upheld, and Ralston Community Council noted that Kelburne had one final option to appeal to the Scottish Government if they wished to continue their request. There has been no further update on the matter from what I can see, so I assume that the issue has been resolved.
When thinking back to the farmhouse mentioned previously, The Furnace was supposedly located at 18 Penilee Road. However, none of the maps that I looked at had any reference to this farm. I wonder if it is possible that the building now used as the Ralston Community Sports Centre used to be this farmhouse. I could not find any further information on this online, and cannot actually confirm the existence of The Furnace. Regardless of this, the area of the geohash can be summarised as feudal land, land belonging to Rylees farm, potentially land belonging to The Furnace farm, potentially land used by previous owners of the RCSC building, and finally land owned by the Ralston Community Sports Centre. The land itself appears to have been consistently grass and has avoided being developed into anything urban.
Progress
Council Area | Postcode | NUTS | Centicule |
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Renfrewshire | PA(1) | UKM83 | 83 |
Expedition Navigation | ||
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- Meetup on 2025-01-30
- Meetup in 55 -4
- Meetup in Renfrewshire
- Expeditions by KerrMcF
- KerrMcF's expeditions by bus
- KerrMcF's expeditions on foot
- KerrMcF's expeditions by subway
- KerrMcF's expeditions by train
- Land geohash achievement
- Public transport geohash achievement
- Two to the N achievement
- Expeditions
- Coordinates reached
- Expeditions with photos