Where do you go when it gets too much? The cars upon cars. The people upon people. The dirt and noise. The over-flowing bins. Your over-flowing brain. The pressure of do-this-and-don’t-do-that. The churn and rumble of what life is sometimes like now. Where do you go to make it stop?

I’ll tell you what I do, always. I head for the parks, my parks. I go from the grey to the green. I head down the clogged arteries of the city towards its lungs, wherever I happen to be. If it’s Aberdeen: Seaton Park. If it’s Glasgow: Bellahouston. And the effect is the same, every time: the dial in my head shifts, I am re-tuned. The thing about cities is they’re great but they’re partly great because, if you need to, you can escape their excesses - under its trees, and by its ponds, and on its lawns. We need our parks.

So I’m pleased to see that Seaton Park has been named as Scotland’s favourite by Fields In Trust, the charity that looks after green spaces. I’ve also compiled a short list below of the best parks in Scotland. This is an official list (i.e. it was compiled by me a minute ago) and I urge you to go to them. Do it. Now. Drop what you’re doing. Phone the office and tell them you’ll be out for the day. Take the dog and the kids. Take a picnic lunch. Take a sunhat (and a brolly). And take your time.

Seaton Park

Childhood memory alert. I’m about six or seven. I’m clambering in and out of Seaton Park’s steam engine – yes, the park has a steam engine! Then I’m in a sword fight (with pencils standing in for swords). Then I’m eating egg sandwiches by the flowerbeds. This is what parks are: places of adventure. But the other great joy of Seaton Park in Aberdeen is its setting: it’s hugged by the Don, and St Machar’s Cathedral and the university. And what a great place to be a student, to be young, because, be honest, in Scotland, parks are beautiful but they may also be the place where you have your first experience of alcohol, and other things.

Bellahouston Park

I love this place on the south side of Glasgow because, more than any other park, you can look through the trees and see roots of a different kind: the roots of art, design and history. The Palace of Art is a remnant of the great Empire Exhibition of 1938. The House for an Art Lover was one of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s dreams that happened. Climb the hill and you’ll also find the foundations of the great mansion that used to be here. Also, I love that this park has another life as a concert hall and church with no roof. The Pope has been here. And Grace Jones.

Festival Park

Some say this is the smallest park in Scotland – who knows. I love it because it sums up how parks work. To the south is one the busiest roads in Glasgow. To the north are the shipyards (or what’s left of them). And all around is a housing estate that’s not the prettiest. And then you come in here. Look at that dog chasing the ball. Look at that blackbird under the shrub. And listen to the way the sounds of the city mingle with the sounds of the country. And here's my special tip: climb up the side of the waterfall and you’ll discover a secret, extra network of paths. No need to thank me.

Hazlehead Park

Ah yes. The Park Café. How to choose: a Mivvi or a Fab or a Mr Whippy? And the maze (I think Granny’s still in there somewhere). And the fort, which seemed impossibly dangerous in the pre-rules 70s. Even now, Hazlehead is still one of the grandest parks of Aberdeen or any city and does that magical thing of taking you to the edge of urban and beyond it, like the opening chapter of something by CS Lewis. The trick to enjoying this great place is to tumble from the formal to the informal, city to country, parkland to woodland, then back again. I wish, really, that I was there right now. I need my parks. We all do.

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