The Glasgow River Festival began in 2004, and was so popular and successful that it keeps getting bigger. The River Festival takes place every year on the Saturday and Sunday of the Glasgow Fair Holiday weekend. This year, that is on the 19th and 20th July.
The River Festival takes place (believe it or not) on the banks of the River Clyde. Events and boats are present on both sides of the Clyde, from the Glasgow Science Centre on the south bank and the Tall Ship Glenlee on the north side, all the way up to the Clyde Arc Bridge (or as we Glaswegians know it: the Squinty Bridge).
Every year, a huge bunch of boats and ships descend onto this area of the Clyde and open up their door
s to the public. You can go onto old historic shipping vessels (including ones that look like pirate ships – I found that the kids loved those last year), Royal Navy and Royal Marines ships, yaghts among other various vessels. This year there is a Royal Marines display, tours of BBC Scotland and STV, hot air balloons, powerboat rides, beach volleyball, duck racing, a farmers market (brilliant cheese to be had there) and a funfair. Last year, on the south side of the river there were jugglers, people on stilts and other performers. All of them seemed to be staff from the Glasgow Science Centre, and all were brilliant with the kids. That was the other part that my kids absolutely loved!
In addition to all the activities, there are also performances by the Jet Ski Wild Champion riders and rowing events throughout the day, as well as a band on a barge performing a few times on Sunday. The Loch Lomond Sea Plane also makes a few appearances…
At night you can take the kids to see Kung Fu Panda at the Imax cinema, go for a meal in one of many restaurants along the Clyde. You could even ditch the kids altogether and while the night away in the Quay, with its casino, restaurants and other attractions.
In my opinion, the Glasgow River Festival is a “not to be missed” event in the Glasgow calendar!!!
For more information, maps or details of events, visit the Glasgow River Festival website.
My overall enjoyable experience was marred by the poor planning of the positioning of some of the events. At approx. 2.30pm on the Saturday I was making my way from the Millenium Bridge to the Bell’s Bridge on the south side of the river when everyone was prevented from passing the BBC Scotland building for 15min due to conjestion. An adhoc contraflow system was created meaning that no-one coming from my direction could walk over to the Farmers Market. I beleive that it was an obvious mistake to position two popular events, the boats that could be visited and the farmers market so close together. Both are events that could resonabley be expected to have people stop and examine for long periods. I find it difficult to understand why the farmers market ws not position elsewhere, given the amount of space that was available to the festival. I am confident that mine’s was not the only custom that the market lost, and is that not the point of the farmers market?
I understand that the contra-flow system was probably created ad-hoc, but, I fail to understand why given the conjestion problem at that time, why visitors were continued to be allowed to cross over to the south side of the Bell’s Bridge thereby increasing the problem of conjestion not relieving it, instead of directing them to the Millenium bridge.
I hope these comments will be considered in planning for the future