The best walks and hikes around Cleland

“Strathclyde Loch is more than just water: beneath its surface, Bothwellhaugh, a mining village swept away in the 1970s, vanished. Today, only a cairn remains as a reminder of the houses, schools, and shops. There's also a Roman fort and an ancient road (yes, Watling Street is still here). Final warning: In 2012, a norovirus outbreak left 57 swimmers unconscious. Water caution.

Certain times of the year there are posts to tell you to keep dogs out water because of the algae

It takes about 70 minutes to walk around the lake.

Several steep steps up to bridge walkway on both sides so short carry needed. Good for linking up Clyde Walkway and Monkey Road.

The Waterfront Cafe in the water sports centre at Strathclyde Country Park is a nice stop on a walk around the loch. The cafe is open every day from 10:00 - 15:30. They serve a selection of freshly made light meals and snacks as well as hot and cold drinks.

Cambusnethan House, or Cambusnethan Priory, in North Lanarkshire, Scotland, was designed by James Gillespie Graham and completed in 1820. It is generally regarded as being the best remaining example of a Graham-built country house in the quasi-ecclesiastical style of the Gothic revival. It was rented for a short number of years in the early 1960s as an architects office for the team who built the 60s part of Livingston, Scotland. Later it was used as a hotel and restaurant and "mediaeval banqueting hall", the last use being tenuously linked with William Finnemund, the 12th century, Laird of Cambusnethan. There was originally a Norman tower house near the site of the present building, and this was replaced by a manor house during the 17th century. The manor house burned down in March 1816, and the present house was commissioned and built in 1820. Recent photo The Priory was built for the Lockhart family of Castlehill, their coat of arms being carved above the main entrance and etched in every balustrade of the main staircase inside. The arms represents a casket, heart and lock and derives from the tradition that the ancestors of this family carried Robert the Bruce's heart back from the holy land. The nearby Cambusnethan Manse (now Elaina Nursing Home, Netherton) was also the birthplace of John Gibson Lockhart, Sir Walter Scott's biographer and later son in law. There are few remaining examples of early 19th-century Neo-Gothic mansions remaining in Scotland as many were demolished in the late 1950s and 1960s. Cambusnethan House is a notable building in its own right as a good example of the neo-Gothic style, and also because so few buildings of this type still remain. Nineteenth-century view. The house is two and three storeys high with turrets at each corner, a three-storey bow in the west elevation and a massive square porch. Characteristically, the house was very ornately decorated with a variety of architectural details; castellated roof lines, scrolled pinnacles, narrow pointed windows and drip moulds, and various cornices, besides carved motifs and decorated chimneys. Some of the ornate pinnacles have been removed in the interest of safety, and there had been at a recent extension to the lower ground floor across a sunken passage across the house with a roof flush with ground level. Use of the building ended in 1984, and the building has fallen prey to vandalism and fire. The building is listed as At Risk by the Scottish Civic Trust but is already in derelict condition. Text taken from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambusnethan_House

Great place to go for a run or a slow cycle. There's a trail all around the lake but too many people to expect to fai any major stores on a bike.

A striking building to stumble across, worth a bit of a detour! Wikipedia describes it as "the resting place of the family of the Dukes of Hamilton. Built in the grounds of the now-demolished Hamilton Palace, its high stone used to hold the record for the longest echo within any man-made structure in the world, taking 15 seconds for the sound of a slammed door to fade. In 2014 the record was broken at the Inchindown oil storage tanks in the Scottish Highlands"