Reel Lives

Comment by Robert McNinch

On a typical Fair holiday morning the Broomielaw would be thronged with whole families going for a fortnight or whatever in the Clyde resorts of Rothesay or Millport or wherever. Most of them rented flats or rooms or huts and operated on a self catering basis so that everything had to be carried with them - the bedding, the pots and pans, everything bar the kitchen sink

Comment by Joyce Booth

Those wonderful holidays. The coast hamper being sent on in advance by rail, the cab arriving from Henderson’s stable, the train to Wemyss Bay and the rush of the salt breeze as we walked onto the pier. A sailor shouting, 'Kirndunooninellenrothesayauchenlochananroon the kyles’ or something like that: the seagulls and the leaping porpoises, the men playing the fiddle, harp and harmonium.

Comment by Iain Simpson

In the early 1970's, my dad was in the Milngavie Pipe Band. Every year, the band competed at the Cowal Games in Dunoon. One year we took the car to Craigendorran and then hopped on the ferry. Once we were underway, I teamed up with a few other kids to play chases round the boat and go and look at the engines as well and frighten ourselves silly, imagining what it would be like if those big noisy swinging things (crankshaft and con rods) swung round and clunked you on the head as you were being held there by evil spies.

As you can imagine, running away from all these spies and standing in the hot engine room was hungry, thirsty work, however, we were not the richest kids around so what we would do was go round the ferry telling everyone that we had lost our sweetie money and literally beg for ha'pennies and when we had enough, we’d go to the shop and buy our swedgers (sweets) and ginger (lemonade) and then when my mum found out what I'd been up to, she was so black-affronted she clipped my ear for me.

Comment by Robert McNinch

There were also the day trippers and they were a slightly different breed. They tended to go in groups, quite often works groups or whatever. They tried to cram as much enjoyment into the day as other folks crammed into a fortnight.

Comment by E. MacIntosh

We used to spend a month in the summer at Millport. We travelled across on the Talisman and the whole family spent the month there with my father having his 2 weeks and at the weekend travelled down on the "Daddies' boat" where we and numerous other families met the Talisman on a Friday and saw them off again on the Sunday.

Questions by Glasgow Museums

Did you spend summers on the Clyde coast? Do you remember queuing up to leave Glasgow in July?

Or maybe you have more recent memories of Glasgow Fair holidays?

Eyewitness by Bill Stoddart

I remember a daytrip to Dunoon. I worked for British Rail at this time and it was a freebie from them for the whole family, all six of us. The boat was packed, it was a lovely summer’s day. We saw all the shipyards down the Clyde all the way out. We didn’t buy souvenirs because we didn’t see it as a holiday, it was just a good day out.

Eyewitness by Alex Robertson

My father took me on many sails down the Clyde when I was a child. I was always unhappy because he insisted that it would be cold out on the water and he made me wear a coat. He always carried our plastic raincoats in his pockets too. He was always correct about the cold. He used to lift me up to stand against the funnel where it was lovely and warm. He took great pleasure in pointing out the porpoises out in the Kyles of Bute and was always looking for basking sharks. We didn’t buy souvenirs because we usually went on daytrips only rather than holidays. My father thought it was more important to check out the engines of the boats than to take anything home after all, this was our river, running through our City.

Eye Witness by Peter Rolf-Austin

The Marchioness of Lorne (1935).One morning in 1954 I stood at the bottom of Bishop Street,gazing out across the expanse of Rothesay Bay.To my surprise, I saw that a Paddler was approaching-one that visited Rothesay very rarely: it was the Marchioness of Lorne. I ran to the pier to get a close up of this rare migrant more properly at home in the Holy Loch and the pier at Kilmun."the Wee Lorne" was one of my favourites. She was of exceptionally neat design with a typical Fairfield funnel with enclosed steam pipes.While her upper deck shelters were fairly spartan,she was well appointed below with a traditional First Class lounge which had comfortable cloth covered seats placed awthartwise in bays. The bottom half of of the lounge served as a tea room.By any standards, she was not a "flyer" her three crank tripple expansion diagnal engine achieving around a modest 15 knots on the Skelmorlie measured mile.Her demise in 1954 after only twenty years service was a blow to all who loved the clyde paddle steamer.