He’s served a knickerbocker glory sundae to Whitney Houston, played in an international football tournament in Canada and camped high in doomed trees in the way of the M77 extension through Glasgow’s Southside.
Danny Alderslowe’s life has been nothing if not colourful, I soon discover over a cuppa in his home just outside Gatehouse.
He spent a handful of years “woofing” round Europe by bike, for example – and considered living on the continent until the pull of Scotland became too strong.
Woofing, incidentally, has nothing to do with mimicking dogs – it stands for “working on organic farms” in return for food and lodgings, Danny explains.
These days, the 57-year-old is as passionate about the environment and nature as ever, his advocacy of pedal power finding an active outlet at Wheels of Fleet, the bicycle repair, rental, exchange and maintenance hub he runs in the town.
Born in Bellshill, Danny was brought up in East Kilbride along with sister Karen and brother John, where he attended St Kenneth’s Primary and St Bride’s Secondary schools.
It was a time of new towns, inner city redevelopment and bitter industrial disputes.
“My mum’s dad’s family were from Donegal and I share the same birthday as him,” Danny tells me.
“My grandpa Patrick Flood was an engineer at Rolls Royce in East Kilbride.
“He was well known and really popular.
“My dad Danny Lowe was a coach painter with BSR in East Kilbride – and my mum Sally worked there too.
“In 1969 there was a big strike at the plant for union recognition.
“I was only four – and one of my earliest memories was seeing these buses arriving with all the blacklegs and scabs going through the picket line to work.
“It was a beautiful sunny day with a big white fence and all the folk were going crazy.
“Mum was a lovely, calm person – but I saw another side to her that day.
When the coaches came in she told me to shout and scream at them.
“One of our neighbours was on a bus – a lot of folk on our street never spoke to her again.
“My mum did, though.”
Violence was never far away on the football terraces either and Danny chuckles at the memory of appearing in the national press during one gruesome incident.
“There were gang fights in the Celtic end at Parkhead and my dad thought it was too dangerous.
“So he took me and my grandpa down to see Motherwell play Hibs but there was fighting there as well.
“At work on the Monday my dad’s pal shouts ‘Hey Danny, yer boay’s in the paper!’.
“And there’s me on the front page of the Scottish Daily Express.
“The cameraman has turned round just as this guy is getting led away with a dart in his head.
“And there’s me, maybe seven or eight, with my eyes sticking out of my head in shock!
“Because of all the violence my dad decided to start up a football team instead, East Kilbride Thistle, and we had seven teams from under-nine to under-16.
“To raise money we would run round doors collecting ginger (Irn Bru) bottles and any old newspapers folk had.
“They were bound up in bundles and stored in the garage then taken to Hannay’s factory for recycling.
“We got £22 a ton – a lot of money in those days – and 5p for each bottle we returned to the shop. We were well ahead of the politicians then!”
Danny recalls his teenage years as being very tough emotionally as people closest to him passed away.
“My mum was diagnosed with cancer when I was 13,” he says quietly.
“When I was doing my O-levels they took the tumour out and she died for 20 seconds.
“She started telling the nurses her bed was on fire.
“She went down this tunnel and met her mum and dad, Patrick and Lizzie.
“They had died within days of each other only two weeks before and she just says to them ‘I’m not ready yet’.
“But three weeks later she was and she passed away.
“I did not do well in my O-levels – my grandpa, gran and mum had all died almost at the same time.
“That summer though I went to Toronto to play for East Kilbride Scotland – that’s what we were called – in an international schools football tournament.
“I raised money to go by selling pontoon cards and collecting ginger bottles.
“We did well and only got put out in the quarter-finals.
“One of the games we were live on TV playing Canada.
“I used to play against Paul McStay and Barry Ferguson and played at Hampden in the Scottish under-18 amateur cup final for East Kilbride YM.”
After leaving school, Danny recalls, he tried out a few jobs – a window cleaner being one – before joining the hospitality trade.
“I had a spell working on the front desk at the Copthorne Hotel in Glasgow,” he chuckles.
“There would always be famous musicians and singers staying from around the world.
“One time I served Whitney Houston and her pal knickerbocker glory sundaes – they were just in white bathrobes and socks!
“They were having great fun mimicking my central Scotland accent.
“Loads of great bands like the Waterboys would be staying.
“I went to gigs at the Barrowland three or four nights a week because I’d be on the guest list – for a lot of them I’d get backstage.
“It was great meeting these people from all over the world coming to Scotland.
“You’d get these Americans coming over trying to find their clan.
“This couple Mary and Chuck Hutchison asked if there were any Hutchisons in this part of town.
“I gave them a phone book and they were calling folk up.
“Imagine – this family in Castlemilk would be sitting down to their fish supper on Friday night and the phone rings.
“And it’s Chuck and Mary from Maryland saying ‘Hi folks, we could be related!’”
Freebies from rock and pop stars were great but, Danny recalls, in his mid-20s life beyond Glasgow and Scotland came calling.
“I had heard about woofing where you worked on organic farms in Europe for four or five hours a day in return for food and a roof over your head.
“So I went to the Netherlands to a farm near Maastricht.
“That’s when I got into cycling – everybody cycled because it was the most practical way to get around.
“And I learned the language really quick – there’s a lot of words in Dutch the same in Scots, like ken and hoose.
“Every town – even in those the same size as Gatehouse – had segregated bike lanes.
“I prolonged my stay at Maastricht – it was at the time of the Balkan wars.
“I was part of a befriending project for Bosnians and Croats aged 18 to 25.
“Some had seen terrible things like charred bodies and schools blown up – suddenly there were neighbours killing neighbours.
“A couple came back to Glasgow with me and loved meeting my mates.
“That alone was quite therapeutic for them because it took their minds off things.
“They struggled to settle in the Netherlands because it was a different country.”
Was Danny ever tempted to settle in Europe?
“Aye, there were many places that I could have stayed the rest of my life,” he admits.
“I had realised I was suffering a lot from depression from back when my mum and gran and grandpa died.
“But I was able to find inner peace on my bike and took up tai chi.
“I moved to work on organic farms in England and Wales and because I’d picked up a lot of practical skills like building and design I was able to pick up paid work and earn some money.
“Then I came back to Scotland just for a holiday.
“Friends of mine in Glasgow suggested I visit the Pollok Free State people because I would like them.
“They were campaigning against the M77 extension slicing through Pollok Park and surrounding communities, which was going to disrupt a natural wildlife corridor.
“There were five or six camps among trees where the road was getting built.
“The protest was not so much against cars but the loss of access to the park and clean air, and the lack of consultation from Glasgow City Council.
“And I ended up staying in the woods with all these people for six days.
“We had a lot of action going on with folk doing shifts.
“Folk would attach themselves to diggers, climb into the trees, lock arm – it was all non-violent direct action.
“We befriended a lot of the security guys and persuaded some of them to quit their jobs because they were getting paid a pittance.
“One famous time all the kids from Bellarmine High School came out – there were hundreds of people there.”
After the road got built, Danny recalls, environmental activity switched from protest to positive action and he helped set up the GalGael project in Govan, which focused on Celtic culture and crafts such as boat building.
“Soon I was taking over bits of waste ground on the Southside for vegetables,” he chuckles.
“I started approaching schools to do food growing projects then Govanhill Housing Association approached me to do the same.
“So there was I in tenement back courts clearing them up, stopping fly tipping and asking the folk what they wanted to grow.
“It became a movement – Govanhill Recycling and Environmental Action Team – and it was massive.”
His next success, Danny smiles, was saving Govanhill Baths, an architectural gem and community swimming pool on the Southside.
“It was a very rare building and international architects would come and see it,” he says.
“We had a picket line outside and occupied the building for eight months.
“We won.”
Danny Lowe got together with Lucy after meeting her at an anti-war demo in Edinburgh, he tells me, adding that they put their surnames together to form a new one, Alderslowe.
“Our first boy Robin was born in 2005 and Luis – that’s Irish for rowan – came along in 2007.
“That was the year I got elected as a Scottish Green councillor for Southside Central. I was still the local gardener and the Greens contacted me to stand.
“I was in the Royal Alexandria Hospital with Lucy for her scan when I got a phone call.
“They said ‘Danny, you better come to the count – it looks as though you’re going to get in!’.
“It was a great experience – I was told I was the busiest councillor because everybody knew me.”
In 2012 the family moved to Barlay Mill, a stone’s throw from Gatehouse Tennis Club’s court, where Danny is a regular.
“We came here so the boys could have fresh air, that was the main reason,” he says.
“Also Lucy has family in Lancashire and Edinburgh, and mine are in East Kilbride and Hamilton, so Galloway was kind of in the middle.
“I worked for three years as a carer in Kirkcudbright and cycled there and back 12 months a year, rain, snow or sunshine.
“I started volunteering at the Gatehouse Drop-in and in 2016 got a job as youth co-ordinator.
“I did that until 2021 and I loved it.”
These days Danny is known in Gatehouse and beyond as the man behind the handlebars at Wheels of Fleet, his bicycle project dedicated to getting more people of all ages pedalling, whether for work or pleasure.
“It was 2015 when I began thinking how beautiful it is to cycle round here and it would be a great place to do a bike project.
“We built our Wheels of Fleet workshop in 2016 and it’s grown and grown since then.
“One positive that came out of Covid was that people appreciated their health and how they lived their lives more.
“Sometimes people would bring in bikes that have been just lying in a shed for ages.
“We would either rebuild it, take parts from it or give them a bike that’s been donated.
“And we began giving out bikes to people looking for work or who had health issues.
“Then we connected to MOOL in Dumfries and started supplying bikes to Syrian refugees and then when the Ukraine war started we did the same.
“Last year we did 55 bikes for Syrian and Ukrainian refugees.”
As Danny explains the project’s achievements, it’s obvious his enthusiasm for it remains undimmed.
“It’s been very rewarding,” he smiles.
“People walking through our gates, be they from America or Twynholm, just say ‘Wow!’.
“But it’s the kindness of people giving us bikes, and the gratitude of the folk receiving them – that’s the best thing of all.
“Also, I have a great team of staff and volunteers who do so many hours. I can’t thank them enough.”
