Things to do in East Renfrewshire, Scotland: The Best Sights & Landmarks

Reviewed By melvyngilbert - Glasgow, United Kingdom

Only ten miles and twenty minutes in the car gets you to the Whitelee Windfarm Visitor Centre. It is therefore no surprise that on a clear day the UK's largest on land windfarm can be seen from the centre of Glasgow (by the Mitchel Library). The visitors centre has free parking, toilets, a cafe and a small exhibition area. It is advisable to pick up a map from here. Although the area is well signposted the map includes each individual turbine which are clearly numbered both on the map as well as the turbine itself making it almost impossible to get lost. There are two signposted walks. One is labelled the "daily mile", which I guess changes from time to time and the walk I took is marked as the 'Lochgoin circuit". This is a eight mile walk which took me about two and a half hours to complete. The windfarm is on Eaglesham moor which is situated at 300 metres elevation. It is a bleak place with no shelter and usually noticeably colder than the nearby city. The walk takes you past quite a few of the turbines which are enormous when you get up close to them. It is impossible to resist standing still by them and bending your neck backwards to watch the blades spinning up high. The noise they make is eerily fascinating and the shadows of the blades that go shooting past your feet on the ground are quite hypnotic. After about a mile I found that I was walking alone with no other people in site. I passed the Loch and a spruce plantation but mostly my view was of sparse moorland with over a hundred whizzing turbines in my view at any given time (there are 215 turbines here in total). I was lucky to get back to the visitor centre before it closed at 5pm to get a coffee as my reward for a long walk and then I used the virtual reality headset to experience being out on the windfarm all over again.