Service Road Strip

ScotRail Class 334 EMU, No. 334020.

Located on the Edinburgh-Bathgate Line.

Located on the Edinburgh-Bathgate Line. Line towards Bathgate and Glasgow.

Located on the Edinburgh-Bathgate Line. Line towards Uphall and Edinburgh..

Located on the Edinburgh-Bathgate Line.

Although Nell Burn is shown on the largest-scale maps as being a small pond upstream of the mini-waterfall, it is unlikely that this is often the case. There has been a lot of rain over the last few days, and from the point the burn leaves the trees in the distant background, to its passage under a railway line just South of here, it flows through - and sometimes over - grassland. This is an odd site in an urban environment; usually such grassy meanderings are only found in remote countryside. The burn begins as a series of drains in Dechmont, then goes underground through the North of Deans, the Northernmost area of Livingston. When the water re-emerges in central Deans it achieves named status (this didn't happen until relatively recently though); then, by way of an old reservoir, it flows through the Eliburn area of the town, before joining Lochshot Burn. According to one website it sometimes also goes by the name of 'Eli Burn', which is obviously how that area of the town got its name. Nell and Ellie are interchangeable shortenings of some female names - e.g. Ellen. 'Eli' is an odd spelling of Ellie - it turns out though that it has something to do with some old noble family (startlingly, still lording it about in 2023!) who occupied Livingston Peel in the mid 1600s, shortly after they were granted the use of the title of Lord Elibank for some favour or other back in the day. Livingston Peel was basically a fancy house masquerading as a castle which once sat in the Eliburn area, and was all there was around here in mediaeval times apart from a few fields, and is the basis for the town's name. Elibank presumably derives from the area that belonged to the Murray family (aka the Elibanks) at the time the peerage was bestowed. A hill, a burn, some crags and a ruined castle still have the name. All are near Walkerburn, in what used to be Peeblesshire, and look to be close to where the family once owned (and no doubt probably still do own) land.

Livingston is awash with stripwoods, almost all of which predate the building of the newtown by a century or more, being former farmland shelterbelts. This one heads roughly South from a cycle path that runs alongside the railway line, but the path running through it is easy to miss - as is the path through the adjoining wood further South across the road - as the signs all direct you to another perfectly adequate (but far duller) tarmacked cycle path that runs parallel to it. The Woodland Trust seems to own the majority of these woods; therefore Ordnance Survey maps are full of small narrow purple rectangles around here. All their woods come with detailed management plans, available online. They also all come with names, though these can sometimes be hard to tie in with what's on the ground when as small as this one, as the plans often have no maps included. Zooming in on the Historic Environment Scotland website's map, though, usually provides an answer. Although this name suggests some kind of historical link - the Kirkton area of Livingston being close by - in all probability it has been given because heading North along it you eventually reach a church, built as part of the newtown. The Woodland Trust is a charity and receives most of its funding through private donations, though businesses (some of which could be charged with greenwashing practices no doubt) and government top this up. Interestingly, a third of their annual income comes from money donated by the dead in wills.

Viewed at Tesco’s massive distribution centre on a very cold December morning.

A railway station on the now through route between Edinburgh and Glasgow. Tags refer to the track's heritage as this is a modern station, opened around 1986.

Well screened by trees.

A view taken from an aeroplane approaching Edinburgh Airport from the east. It is more or less centred on the Deans Industrial Estate. The main Glasgow-Edinburgh railway line runs across the middle the picture between the A779 below and the M8 above. The long white building beside the M8 is the Tesco Distribution Centre for Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Tesco's Distribution Centre in Livingston (the long white building) opened in 2008, supplying all the company's stores in Scotland and Northern Ireland. It covers an area of one million square feet. The road haulage company Stobart transports goods from the centre to the Grangemouth rail terminal, whence they are sent on by rail to Inverness for distribution throughout the north of Scotland. Compare this with an almost identical view, but from a slightly higher altitude in winter, photographed by Thomas Nugent. NT0168 : Tesco Distribution Centre and the M8 from the air

A view of the north-west edge of the town taken from an aeroplane approaching Edinburgh Airport. The view is more or less centred on the housing between the main Edinburgh-Glasgow railway line, cutting across the picture, and Houston Road running westwards from the Eliburn North Roundabout on the right.