Hi Jim:
I'm six months behind the times, but as you skirted Blackhill in the exporation of the Molendinar, here's what a stretch of it looked looked like 30 years ago, before it was buried (or, in this case, thankfully laid to rest) by a motorway.
The excerpt is from
http://www.stephaniepiro.com/fc286.htm
....The houses (on Acrehill Street) lay in the shadow of Provan Gas Works, with its great hills of coke, and two enormous metallic grey gas-holders which rose or fell dependant upon the city’s demand for gas. Nearby, a chemical works poured acrid orange fumes over the glass-littered streets when the wind was from the west; a derelict whisky bond provided fuel, one night, for one of Glasgow’s more spectacular fires and charred remains for years after; abandoned railroad tracks snaked and rotted; and a smelly canal fed by a ditched stream (once known as the Molendinar Burn) held green water and the burned and blackened frames of stolen cars....
When ever I passed by the burn, if not recalling John Clare's verse (see above), I would sing the following:
"Oh, nothing could be finer than to see the Molendinar in the mo-o-orning
Ah really think ye oughter go and see that sparkling water in the mo-o-orning
There's a little stream flows through the Craighead Bond
Babbling oot o the Blackhill Pond ...
Oh, nothing, etc."