Glasgow Riverside Museum

On a strangely bright and sunny January day, 14 of us went into Glasgow's Yorkhill to visit the Riverside Museum, which was designed by architect Zaha Hadid and opened in June 2011 as a replacement for the Glasgow Museum of Transport. The fairly distinctive-looking building is Hadid’s interpretation of Glasgow’s seafaring past. Twisting and curving, a rippling zinc structure sits atop a steel frame, representing a wave, or pleat.

The museum exhibits have everything from skateboards to steam locomotives and fire engines on display. There are lots of cars, buses, trams, lorries, trains, ship models and motorcycles, some of which you can get into for a nosey around.

There's also a reconstructed Glasgow tenement street, cobbled of course, of between 1890 to 1930 with houses, shops, a café, a bar and even an underground station, complete with a section of an old subway carriage. Again, you can get into a number of them and see the interiors.

It certainly stirred the memories of many of the group and a lot of the exhibits were familiar items from our past. I grew up in Maryhill in the 50s and 60s, and I'm sure some of our older lads go back farther than that, and a lot of things stirred my memories, particularly the old corporation buses and trams and the old lorries from which we'd try and get a hudgie off of.

It was pretty busy when we were there - lots of adults and children and even a few groups. With over 3,000 things on display, there's lots to see and it's well worth a visit.

After a good old wander around the exhibits, we had a very nice light lunch in the downstairs café (the upstairs one is pretty small) before heading back to Neilston.

Just outside on the quayside is Glasgow's Tall Ship, the Glenlee. It's a steel-hulled three-masted barque, built as a cargo ship in 1896 by Anderson Rodger & Company at their Bay Shipyard in Port Glasgow for the Glen-line of the Glasgow shipping company Archibald Sterling & Co. Ltd.

Sadly it wasn't open to the public when we visited as they were working on it but it should be open again in the Spring.

If you fancy a visit to the Glasgow Science Centre, then you'll find all the information you need on their web site:

• • https://www.glasgowlife.org.uk/museums/riverside-museum

…and you'll find a fair bit of background information and history about it here:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverside_Museum

…and information about the Tall Ship here:

• https://thetallship.com/glenlee/

NB: Entry to the museum is free but be aware that Glasgow City Council have fairly expensive charges in the car park and the machines only accept coins. See here for more info:

• https://www.glasgow.gov.uk/riversidecarpark