River Festival again

The River Festival was back this weekend so the new camera and I went along. Unfortunately the weather was not as good as last year, hence these shots through my umbrella:

 

 

They opened both bridges for the tall ships to get through on their way back down the river. The announcement went something like this: "We will be opening both Bells Bridge and the Science Centre bridge in 10 minutes. If you are still on them, we're opening them anyway."

 

Bells Bridge swung open.

 

Science Centre bridge open.

 

Fantastic Viking longboat people. And their sheep. Sample of overheard conversation: "Come on Erik, we'll never get back to Scandinavia in time at this rate!"

 

Reflections.

 

Man showing off in a wee boat.

 

More reflections.

Then I went to chat to the people from the GalGael Trust who make traditional boats, aiming to revive old skills and give unemployed young men in the Govan area a sense of purpose and identity that's often missing in an area that used to be heavily involved in shipbuilding, but now suffers from wide-spread unemployment.

I'd heard one of the men from the group giving a brief talk at a presentation for Gaelic poet Derick Thomson and, being keen on boats, thought they might let me come along and take some photos of people working on them. Anyway, they said I certainly could or I could come along and help build boats! I'd thought it was only guys they had working on the project but apparently not...

Here are a few photos of a demonstration of swords and clothes and whatnot beside one of their boats (though I didn't get a very good shot of it).

 

 

 

 

Wood carving.

 

Very tall cyclist.

 

Vikings again!

 

"How would you like to be mutton stew?"

 

Stripy braces.

 

The Royalist heading for the open sea.

 

The Tenacious doing the same. Except they made rather more effort with the whole "setting sail" thing.

 

The Tenacious and the tower.

 

Weird bike thing with trumpets attached.