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Starlaw Road, BATHGATE, EH47 7BW

As seen from across a barley field waiting for harvest at Starlaw. See Image

Wastelands are often mysterious. This small one sits above the Starlaw - officially Glen Turner - grain whisky distillery situated between Bathgate and Livingston, which is behind camera. It is far closer to housing in Bathgate than housing in Livingston, however, and sits on the periphery of Livingston's very suburban industrial estates. Bathgate, being an old town, doesn't always get included in Livingston's (newtown) industrial decision-making, which often leads to problems. The pile of big stones at the top left of the photo might well result from excavations undertaken recently during the planting of trees on nearby land and have nothing to do to with the distillery whatsoever. But the wasteland definitely originates from the building of the distillery. It is higher than the distillery and higher than the road that leads to the distillery. From my amateur viewpoint it looks like all the earth excavated in order that the distillery could be built on flat ground has ended up here, and that the over-ordered aggregates, bought for the distillery's building, ended up being put on top. I've looked at the recent news, and the distillery are either in the process of expanding their operations, or just trying to get permission to do so. The big dispute - undisputedly - is regarding black fungus, which they don't tell you about on whisky distillery tours. On the tours the slow escape of whisky from the wood barrels they get stored in is always described romantically as 'the angels' share'! But fungi like the taste and somehow turn walls (and even local roadsigns, by all accounts), into unhealthy black places.

The map suggests that this is a loop road off Starlaw Road, but is clearly being used as a dumping place for the muck from a byre.

Now a dead end, and a counterpart to Jim Smillie's Image, at the other side of the new Starlaw Road.

Tailend Moss is a protected peat bog, named after a farm called Tailend which used to lie just East of here. On its former location now sits Starlaw Business Park, strangely named as Starlaw Farm, which is still here, is on the opposite side of the road and Southwest of here. Though it sounds quite exotic Starlaw was referred to as Stairlaw on Roys Military Map of the 1750s. The farm sits on top of the law, or small hill, so it seems logical that the farm took its name from the hill which probably once had either natural or man-made steps somewhere near its summit.

Bog managed as a nature reserve by the Scottish Wildlife Trust. The open water is land sunk by mining subsidence. View NE.

A raised bog, seen from the south-east. Between Starlaw Road and the Edinburgh-Bathgate railway. The industrial buildings at lower left are part of a distillery - see Image