Helensburgh 1999.

I have been a member of the National Trust for Scotland for forty years or more and, some years ago, on behalf of the Edinburgh Branch of the NTS, I was involved in organising short trips to visit some of their properties around Scotland. To tell you the truth, I had completely forgotten that ill fated Spanish holiday when I agreed to take a party of older NTS members to visit the Rennie Mackintosh designed Hill House, situated near Helensburgh, on the west coast of Scotland.

The time and place of the visit had been well advertised and a full coach load of members had reserved places. I had done my homework and had tried to consider all possible problems. As our route to the house would take us through Glasgow near mid day on a Saturday, I checked football fixtures for the day so I knew there were important matches in Glasgow that particular Saturday that would attract lots of football fans. The roads were likely to be busy.

My wife and I drove to The Hill House two weeks before we were due to take our group there. We went by the M8 motorway to Glasgow before picking up the A814 to Helensburgh. We introduced ourselves to the staff at The Hill House and told them of our booked visit and made sure we were expected. I also asked if they had any last minute concerns to share with us. They didn’t. Ours would be a perfectly normal visit and everything would be fine, we were told. We returned along the more northern A811 to Stirling before picking up the M9 back to Edinburgh. The return route was slightly longer than the outward leg but it allowed us to check out an alternative route to the motorway one. It also passed through Drymen where our group would be stopping on our way back from visiting Hill House and gave us an opportunity to visit the hotel where we would be taking our booked high tea. The hotel manager showed us the area he had reserved for us as well as the menu. Everything seemed perfect. It promised to be a splendid day out. What could go wrong?

Everyone was told to meet in Charlotte Square, Edinburgh at 10 am on the arranged Saturday morning in late Spring. As I waited for the last member to arrive, unpleasant memories of my ill-fated Spanish adventure forcing themselves to the surface. Surely, I was not to experience a repeat of that earlier adventure. It had been dinned into everyone who had reserved a place that the coach always left on time. It waited for no one, they were told. So,when, after a delay of ten minutes the missing member still had not appeared, I felt I had done everything I could for her and we left without her.

Our route to The Hill House would normally have been along the M8 motorway but because it was a Saturday and I knew football supporters would be out in force, I suggested to the driver that we should take the slightly longer but far less trafficked M9 to Stirling and then to pick up the A811 to Helensburgh,. He immediately put me in my place. ‘I’m the driver. I do this all the time. You leave the driving and the route to me.’

Thus chastised, I returned to me seat but I continued to worry.

We hadn’t even reached Glasgow before we were broug

ht to a standstill by the weight of football traffic. Our driver refused at first to acknowledge that perhaps he had made a mistake so we continued to make progress at a snail’s pace. Eventually, even he had had enough and he exited the motorway to try an alternative route. Unfortunately, he was too far committed to the route he had chosen so the slight detour he took made little difference. Eventually, what should have been a pleasant two hour trip turned into a three hour marathon. You should also remember that the coach was full of elderly people who needed regular visits to the toilet. After three hours many were at bursting point.

Imagine my consternation when we discovered that the car park at Hill House was completely full. Such was the chaos, the driver couldn’t even stop in front of the house to let everyone out. We eventually found a spot a few hundred yards from the house and everyone got out. I was on hand to help people negotiate the quite steep step out of the coach and one elderly man, waving away my help, went sprawling. He even reacted badly when I tried to help him up. But that was merely the start of my troubles.

The lady we had been forced to leave behind in Edinburgh had realized we had left without her so she had taken the direct train From Edinburgh to Helensburgh and she had easily beaten us to the House. She introduced herself, apologized for missing the coach and told me she had been waiting for a half an hour for us to arrive. She also revealed why there was such a scrum of people. It seemed, that that particular Saturday was what is known as a Glasgow Doors Open Saturday. In other words, to promote more future visitors to the House, on that day and that day only they were providing free entrance to the house and grounds. Naturally, sensing a bargain, half of Glasgow had descended on the House. The staff at the house had completely forgotten to mention that particular problem when my wife and I had visited a mere two weeks earlier. But my people still needed to get in, even if it was only for the toilet. So, ignoring the scowls of the people waiting in a big queue, I pushed to the front and demanded to see whoever was in charge. When she arrived I explained who we were and how our visit had been booked weeks in advance; that we were all members of the NTS; that we had spent the last three hours travelling to the House and that we now desperately needed entry. Special tickets were produced and all my members filed past the irate people still waiting patiently in the queue. But our problems were not yet over.

We soon discovered that there was only one toilet in the House for men and only two toilets for ladies, which had to be shared with a hundred other people. Those able to wait decided to go for a coffee and cake. Unfortunately, because so many people had arrived – you might have thought that as it was a Doors Open day those in charge might have expected a large influx of visitors – they had already run out of cups and plates so could not serve anyone else. The visit was a disaster. Still, we had our high tea to look forward to, didn’t we?

When everyone had had their fill of what the Hill House had to offer, or perhaps didn’t have to offer would be more correct, we climbed back into our coach for the short trip back to Drymen where our high tea awaited us. As we approached the hotel, it was on the right hand side of the road and because the car park looked difficult to navigate, the driver pulled to a halt in front of the hotel. The road cambered down quite sharply to the pavement so the driver decided everyone would be safer getting out on the road, i.e. the left side of the bus. Of course, that entrance was now facing out to the road, so to make sure no one was run over by passing vehicles I went to stand at the door together with the driver to help people out. Gradually the group exited the bus. Suddenly, screams of help were heard from the other side of the bus. Rushing around, I discovered a large, elderly man prostrate on the floor immediately outside the open emergency exit from the bus. Getting tired of waiting for those in front to get off the coach, he had decided to open the emergency door located near the back of the coach to speed up the exit. Unfortunately, he hadn’t realized that the door was very heavy and that because the bus was on a steep slope, when it opened it would open suddenly and quickly. It had literally pulled him out of the coach and he had fallen hip first about four feet onto the solid ground. We could not move him because he was so big and heavy and because he was in such agony. He had actually fractured his hip, we later discovered. I immediately rang for an ambulance. Remember, we were at that time in a tiny village miles from the nearest hospital but I was, quite out of the blue, given the only bit of good luck I had been given all that day. An empty ambulance happened to be on its way to Stirling and would be passing us in a few minutes. When it arrived the ambulance team needed a special hoist to get our damaged visitor into the ambulance. All the while he complained that he was going to miss his high tea.

After waving goodbye to the ambulance, I went into the hotel where I discovered that all the details my wife and I had been told two weeks earlier had since been changed. A large wedding party had arrived and now occupied the space that had been reserved for my group. Fortunately, the high tea was unchanged even if the area in which we had to eat and drink it was nowhere as nice as the area we had been promised.

We eventually arrived back in Edinburgh without losing anyone else to bubonic plague or through and alien invasion and as the coach emptied, the driver remarked to me, ‘this has to go down as the most disaster prone outing I’ve ever know.’ Of course he didn’t know about my Spanish outing.

Heaving a sigh of relief that the worst was now over, I was just about to get off the bus when a little lady, who had been one of the group and had got off earlier, suddenly popped her head back into the coach. ‘I think I’ve lost my bus pass,’ she said.

Bernard Gallivan

February 2021