ONCE again the River Clyde is said to be at the centre of plans to kick start the local economy. To make the Clyde “more usable”. But when we look at photos of the river, and what we see on TV, it looks like it’s just a stretch of water that we build bridges across. No boats, no river traffic. Are boats banned from the river?
I have spent quite a bit of time cruising some of the rivers and canals on the continent. Having seen what they have over there, how they have got things organised there, makes me shake my head when I compare it with what we have here.
I was with my boat in Tarbet some time ago and was going ashore to do some shopping. I was carrying a plastic shopping bag with the name of a well-known shop in Germany. Someone hailed me in German thinking I was a fellow countryman. When he found I was a Scot and had been to Germany in my boat, he thought I was crazy.
READ MORE: River Clyde at centre of plans to kick-start the local economy
“You live in this beautiful country and you go across the North Sea to Germany?”
We have the Forth and Clyde Canal bringing boat traffic from the North Sea, from Europe. It needs some attention. We spent a lot of money building the Kelpies but left the channel from the Firth of Forth to the first sea lock on the canal an exciting experience.
Back to the Clyde. From Glasgow, heading “doon the water” we come to Dumbarton Rock and the River Leven – where the Cutty Sark was built – and a few miles up river there’s Loch Lomond. (If Loch Lomond was in England it would be the most famous lake in the world). I know it’s classed as “not navigable”, but that would not be difficult to put right. Boating tourists could spend a holiday there – like they do in the Caledonian Canal. Out into the Firth of Clyde, where my German friend thought: “What more could we ask for? All the beautiful lochs and islands to explore. With many safe places to shelter if the weather becomes bad.”
And here we also have the beautiful Crinan Canal that takes us to many more islands and lochs, and out into the Atlantic Ocean if you’re feeling adventurous.
We all know about the famous shipyards of the Clyde, at one time the heart of shipbuilding worldwide: but now there’s no evidence of it. They have the Cutty Sark on the Thames, along with other ships. On the Continent I saw a British-built destroyer and submarine all spruced up and drawing lots of tourists.
What we had, on the Gare Loch, was a ship-breaking yard. My first ship, the last and biggest of the great battleships, built by John Brown at Clydebank, went there to be made into razor blades – that was how the old sailors who had done time during World War Two put it. We were building them better and faster than anyone else at one time, then we took to demolishing them, and the memory of the Clyde along with them.
They say steam locomotives opened up the vast continents of the Empire, accelerating their development. Hundreds of them were built in Glasgow then trundled through the streets of the city to the Clyde to be shipped around the world in ships built on the Clyde.
These days are over now, but surely the memory of the Clyde warrants more than a “squinty bridge”.
Thomas McCluskey
via email
THERE has been no old-age pension pot since 1945 – it was all used up paying for the Second World War. The pension is now paid from general taxation.
An independent Scotland would be able to fund, eventually, a much greater pension as we would NOT be funding the same things as the English Government wastes our money on.
William Purves
Galashiels
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