Riverside regatta

The river will come alive a little on Saturday 16 July from 10am till 6pm when a regatta will be in full sail around the new Riverside Museum. Billed as a ‘great day for all the family’, expect to see water displays including wakeboarding – a cross between jet skiing and surfing – with the WaveScot team and the first ever Riverside Rowing Regatta featuring Sea Cadets. The tall ship Glaciere will sail in from Liverpool to tie up near the existing Glenlee. Both vessels will welcome people aboard though there will be a charge for that. There is, still, no charge to go into the Riverside Museum which is now taking the title of Scotland’s Transport Museum.

Outside the Riverside Museum, there will be a variety of exhibitors including Clyde Waterfront, Galgael, the Royal Marines and various children’s activities brought as part of the Cadbury’s Spots and Stripes London 2012 Olympics campaign.  

Councillor George Redmond, Chair of Glasgow Life, said: ‘The Riverside Museum has been enormously popular since it opened last month and many visitors have been delighted by the close links it has to the River Clyde. The Clyde Waterfront Riverside Regatta will be a spectacular day for all the family.’

* IF you have visited the Riverside Museum – what are your comments on the experience?  Email us on: franklinfeatures@gmail.com

Editorial

Glasgow launches into a great new era with the Transport Museum and a river ferry to get to its door.  The proud claim that ‘Glasgow made the Clyde and the Clyde made Glasgow’ was true early last century. So far in this 21st century,  the River Clyde is dead of any meaningful, daily, traffic around the city. Perhaps the ferry fielding small numbers of people from Govan’s Water Row to the exciting Riverside Transport Museum will be the start of a renaissance of river craft plying the water. Certainly a one-day Regatta (organised from Bristol!) will brighten things for the day on Saturday 16 July for those who chance to find out about it.

With the Glenlee so majestically moored at the entrance to the Riverside Museum, it is a fitting location for such a fascinating ikon which sheds light on even earlier maritime exploits.  But where are the visual references to the world class war ships which are now reaching the end of their production cycle at Govan and Scotstoun yards? Will the Riverside Museum transport us into a new age when water craft will ease the congestion on roads and the damage to the planet of the infernal combusion engine? We’ll find out as the tide ebbs and flows.

 

Fair Tall Ship

The Tall Ship at Glasgow Harbour, SV Glenlee, is lowering her gangways once again, following three months of closure for renovations, to host her annual Christmas Gift Fair on Saturday 27 and Sunday 28 November.
The vessel will be bustling with unique Christmas gift ideas including hand-made cards and decorations, jewellery, and ceramics, and luxury items to simple stocking fillers. There will even be a special visit from Santa. This glittering weekend event will run from 11am until 4pm and entry is absolutely FREE.
The Glenlee’s renovations include building an education space, expanding the rear deckhouse and installing new toilets. The work will continue till the end of February 2011 when the tall ship will move to Glasgow’s new Riverside Museum where she will re-open when that facility opens next spring.
Since tying up at Glasgow Harbour in 1999, the Glenlee has welcomed more than half a million visitors. She is the only remaining Clyde-built sailing vessel afloat in the UK.
The Clyde Maritime Trust has raised £1million of the £1.5 million required for the ship’s refurbishment. But grants, donations and goods in kind and efforts to secure funding are ongoing.

Junior boffins stand tall

Young scientists from Glasgow joined hundreds of others at the Tall Ship in Glasgow for a special Family Science Day .
The Family Science Day event run by the Shell Education Service on the 22 May saw primary school pupils and their families taking part in practical science investigations that featured electricity, energy transfer, forces and motion and materials.
Meg Post, one of the workshop leaders from the Shell Education Service, said: ‘Children are naturally inquisitive so when they are faced with investigating science their excitement is there for everyone to see.’

 

Molly McKenna (8), from St Rose of Lima Primary School in Garthamlock, gets into a bit of soapy bubble when she takes a close look at the science of bubbles with the help of science teacher and bubble expert James Soper.