Glasgow River Festival July 2005
We were invited to attend the Glasgow River Festival again this year and as the dates would coincide with high tides which might be enough to have Glasgow Weir opened, we just had to go. We set off from Ratho on the Monday morning so that we could travel with Peter and Elaine Scott on their hire boat, Willow Grouse, to Bowling and it was fun travelling in convoy. Peter and Elaine are old friends who also have a share in Copperkins and as they wanted to see as much of the Lowland canals as possible we did some quite long days. On Monday night we moored in the tranquillity of the transhipment basin near the Avon aqueduct, day two saw us at Applecross Street where we had hoped to inspect the work being done to link up Port Dundas with the Glasgow branch but the area was enclosed in security fencing and we could only see the work being done on the first lock. The next night we were in Bowling basin and after we said good bye to Peter and Elaine the next morning we had a day off relaxing and washing Gamebird to make her look her best for the Festival. On Friday we left Bowling sea lock about mid day for a run up to Princes Dock, a journey which took the Union flotilla - Ratho Princess, Caruso and Gamebird just over two hours. We moored up and dressed Gamebird with her name in flags and I delivered invitations to the other boats to join us on a trip past Glasgow weir the next night. I was organising this with my Scottish Inland Waterways Association hat on. To take part in the weir trip, boats had to have air draft under about 9 feet to enable them to get to the weir and this together with the time of the trip, meant that there were only three volunteers - the Union flotilla! the first weir was built in Glasgow 103 years ago to give the Glaswegians some water to boat on and to prevent sewage being washed upstream, and left on the river banks at Glasgow Green. The present weir is the fifth to be built and it was constructed after a visit to Richmond weir on the Thames. It was a pity they didn't also include a lock as they did at Richmond. The weir can only be opened when the water either side equalises and this only happens at very high tides. That weekend the predicted tides were high but because of the weather it was thought that the actual tides might not all be high enough. The predicted tide on the Saturday afternoon was unlikely to reach the required level and although the one on Sunday afternoon would, we needed that tide to get back to Bowling and through the sea lock. The only other tide was at 3.36am on Sunday and it was predicted to be high enough to give us a couple of hours upriver. This was the tide we were going for! I arrange with the weir operator to phone me when he opened the weir (which, because of the tide, would possibly be about an hour before high water) and the three boats moved out of Princes dock and moored on the pontoons at Broomielaw. This was not only nearer the weir built it meant that we didn't disturb neighbouring boats when we set off on the trip.
After a small malt we all retired to bed. Peter and Elaine had handed back their hire boat that morning and accepted our invitation to join us on the weir trip. Gamebird is only 26 feet long but we reckoned that fot one night we could all manage to fit into the large double bed!
At 2.28 I was awakened with my phone ringing. The weir was being opened.
You have never seen 4 people get up and dressed so quickly and we wakened the others and off we set under the remaining bridges to the weir. The bridges were all under lit with coloured lights and it was very picturesque. We were surprised at the number of owls flying over the water both here and further upriver. We got to the weir and initially we had difficulty making out which of the gates was open - it was still dark. However, we saw the weir operators basket being lowered for us to place the bottles of beer etc we had offered to give him for opening the weir for us and that told us where to go. Once past the weir, we realised just how dark it was and we navigated by the moon shining on the water. It was magical although at times when we were in a heavily wooded area, we had difficulty determining where the river went. We knew the weir would be open for about two hours and I had arranged with the weir operator to phone me when the water started to drop but in fact, we decided, after cruising for just over an hour, to turn back. We had been up past Dalmarnock sewage works (we knew that 'cos we smelt them) and we turned about Millerfield Road. We must go back in the daylight and perhaps using two tides, see how far upriver we can go. We certainly had plenty of water under us when we turned.
We thanked the weir operator when we cruised past him and when we were all safely moored back on the pontoon at Broomilelaw Ronnie opened a bottle of champagne to celebrate the event.
We all went back to bed at about 4.45am.
Later that morning we returned to the Festival and then on to Bowing to start our journey back. We cheated a bit and didn't cruise back to Ratho but put Gamebird on her trailer at Kirkintilloch so that we could take her home to get ready for her next trip. We are taking her down to the IWA Festival at Preston Brook.
Here are a few photos of the Festival