KYQ4: Speirs Wharf and Canal

Speirs Wharf

After Storm Ali, we were treated to a recovery day with a fresh breeze and sunny skies. I had been meaning to visit the Forth Clyde canal that extends to the city centre at Speirs Wharf. It is thirty years since I had last been here since when the efforts of the Forth and Clyde Canal Society have created an attractive green wildlife corridor through Maryhill to Port Dundas. The former grain warehouses have been converted to loft-style flats and the towpath provides a quiet route for walking, running and cycling.

Richard Davies, the secretary of the Society in the 1980s, had been a work colleague; he devoted enormous energy and was dedicated to restoring the canal so that it could be used by boats and become a city attraction. Like many other regeneration projects in Glasgow, following its eventual reopening in 2002, it has been bedeviled by funding difficulties and is now suffering because bridges can no longer be opened to allow the passage of narrowboats. Dredging problems are also emerging and boats can no longer travel along certain sections. Ideally, the investment should have released pockets of vacant land for housing and small businesses but developments have been mainly for blocks of student accommodation and larger offices including the headquarters of National Theatre of Scotland, known as Rockvilla.

Speirs Wharf has a cafe and a number of houseboats line the canal. The impression is that it should have far more of a buzz as it would in other UK cities that celebrate their canals. Towards Maryhill and the Firhill Basin, there were almost no other people taking advantage of the towpath. Some locals were fishing at Firhill Basin and I spoke to a man who was stationed at his pigeon doocot. He lamented the decline in the number of pigeon doocots, particularly in the housing schemes. There had been over a thousand in the 1980s when unemployment in Glasgow had soared during the Thatcher years. I passed Partick Thistle's Football ground at Firhill basin, amazed at how the pitch was so green but it is only September. Whatever happened to the grassless muddy penalty areas of yesteryear?

Continuing the walk towards Ruchill, the only others on the towpath were students making their way to and from the university. Apart from the noise of Maryhill Road below, you could have been deep in the countryside. Several herons were perched on tree stumps, swans and mallards were lazing in the afternoon sun and moorhens were scooting about at the edge of the canal. The debris from Storm Ali, including broken branches from Ash trees, were scattered with the early fall of leaves. It was the fag end of a good summer.

I decided to walk back along Maryhill Road and visit the Mackintosh Church at Queens Cross. I continued to St George's Cross recalling how when I had arrived in Glasgow in the 1970s, the tenements had been overcrowded, every close was occupied by children playing and most of the shops had extended their wares onto the pavement. Today the shops are no longer convenient but the usual medley of fast food takeaways, hairdressers, IT and phone repairs, nail and tanning shops. The Land Rover dealership is a bit incongruous but all the better for that. I called in at the Woodside Inn in the hope of catching up with an old Councillor friend. The bartender told me that he called in every day for a "hauf and a hauf" but had not yet appeared, it was only 4pm. I could have waited but decided to save that for another day.