River festival photos

Well we made it down to the River Festival at Pacific Quay on Sunday - just as the glorious sunshine of Sunday morning disappeared.

SECC with a mass of people milling around not sure what to try out next. We were amazed at how mobbed it was - even in the middle of the afternoon on the second day. Looks like it was a great success.

The two main zones were were, on the south, the Science Centre and the BBC and on the north - the Crowne Plaza hotel and SECC - though the Science Centre was the main area for most of the shows.

It you are a fan of boats or boating - (which Glasgow being the home of the shipbuilders there must be a few) then the River Festival was the place to be. Even if you are not a fan of boats though there was plenty to see - lots of fair ground rides and stalls, lots of wee places to have food - tents with music, a giant inflatable loaf of bread for kids to play in and the farmers market at the south rotunda.

We sadly didn't actually have a shot on anything - but we did watch a lot of smiling faces zooming about on the river in speed boats, saw a some crazy zap kat boat racing and watch a queues of people wandered on around and off a vast array of boats - from still serving navy ships to old riggers. Now I'm not a big fan of ships ( I get travel sick on the bus into town sometimes) but I did enjoy seeing the Vital spark and a miniature puffer moored up beside. They are the kind of ships I imagine when I think of the Clyde - with black billowing smoke and short, sharp toots and whistles to passersby.

One very interesting thing we learned - was that the high speed tours of the Clyde by Seaforce are actually an all year round event - and you can sign up to 1 hour or 5 hour tours of the river. That sounds like fun and we will definitely try it out soon. (We kind of think the Clyde is part of the Southside.)

The fat captain of the Vital Spark slugs down a Guinness.

In the navy - There was also a still serving navy ship on display - there was a also a stand where you could sign up and join them. It made me think that times have changed a fair bit - and I imagined the scene a few hundred years ago - with sailors from the navy wandering the crowds and just grabbing people that looked navy material and just press ganging them onto the ship. ( I wonder how many of the tour visitors - didn't actually make it back off on Sunday.

The Squinty bridge - at 5:30 a ton of sponsored yellow ducks were to be dropped from the Finneston Crane - with the first past the bridge the winner. It had started to rain by that point so we'd done a bunk.

The River Festival - now in its third year looks to be going from strength to strength and next year we'll have to try and make it down a bit earlier and actually try out some of the fun on offer.