Strathclyde Country Park memories

Seeing in the magazine that the Club is developing new site at Strathclyde Country Park brought back a few memories for us.  Way back when, in the mid- to late-eighties, Cathy and I would go camping in our tent.  We particularly enjoyed going to the North West of Scotland near Ullapool, and travelling up from Portsmouth we would stop off at the end of a long day’s drive at Strathclyde Country Park, which was a handy mid-way point.

In those days it was a very good municipal campsite, and had excellent wash and toilet blocks, but little in the way of evening leisure facilities.  So one particular evening after our hard day on the road, having arrived and set up camp, we fancied a drink - but with nothing on-site, we had to go and find a pub.  We decided to leave the site and just keep turning left until we got to one.

The left turns led us away from Hamilton and towards Motherwell.  Soon enough my hawkeye and natural homing instinct for a pint spotted a “McEwan” sign on an otherwise forbidding wall.  We stopped and approached the building.  It had steel shutters on the windows, and a steel door.  But it had a “McEwan” sign.

I opened the door and walked in.  Just like in the cowboy movies when the piano player stops as the gunslinger walks in, it went deadly quiet as the three customers who were sat around a table (which, like the chairs they sat on, was screwed to the floor) turned to look at me.  Their part-consumed pints in plastic glasses were held accusingly in their hands, interrupted and impatient.  The room was tiny, just big enough for four four-seater tables and a small bar along one wall.  Squeezed in behind the implausibly short bar stood the three biggest bartenders I have ever seen.

Then Cathy walked in behind me, and the dead silence dropped to something even more still, a quietness that was deeper than the deepest grave.  Pins were dropping in Australia; we knew, we could hear them.  Optimistically I turned to Cathy and asked “What would you like to drink?”

At that point the biggest of the three huge barmen said in a slow Glaswegian drawl: “The lounge bar is upstairs.”  He didn’t really need to say anything else.

We hadn’t spotted any signs or indications of another bar.  “Oh, right.  How do we get to it?”  “Outside, first door on the left, and up the stairs.”  “OK, thanks.”  And with that we waved them a cheery farewell.

We followed his directions and came to a really delightfully appointed lounge bar – truly a world away from the drinking factory downstairs.  The lounge bar was very welcoming and a real pleasure to be in. 

It was only when we looked around outside that we realised what we had done and where we were.  The bar was right outside one of the main gates of the huge Ravenscraig Steelworks.  Downstairs it wasn’t a public bar in the normal sense of “public”.  Clearly this was where a lot of very thirsty men came to quench that thirst at the end of a long, hot, and physical shift.  And that was all.

Sadly the steelworks is no more, and I really don’t know what has happened to the pub, but it was an interesting experience for us, and one that was brought back to mind when we spotted that the Caravan Club had taken over the site.  Hopefully we will be able to swing by the site again on our way to the wild highlands soon, and we look forward to more reminiscing as we do so.