IN blissfully sunny weather, thousands of Glaswegians - armed with, in the words of the Evening Times, transistor radios, luggage and sun-lotion - queued for hours, waiting for coaches that would take them down south for a week or two. “This,” said an official with a bus company, “is our busiest-ever Fair. I have never seen such a queue in my life.”
The patient and good-natured queue assembled at the top of Buchanan Street in July 1972, as the Glasgow Fair got into full swing.
The bus-company official said that “anyone without a ticket has no chance of getting a seat.” One would-be holidaymaker, a man in his late 60s from Cumbernauld Village, reluctantly recognised the truth in that. He said he had saved for months in order to enjoy a fortnight’s holiday in Blackpool. “Now it looks as if I’m not going to get my holiday,” he lamented, “all because I stupidly forgot to get a ticket.”
Read more: Herald Diary: Burns at his bawdiest best
Glasgow Airport that July 15, a squadron of planes took off, bound for the Continent - Spain, in the main. There were large queues for holiday trains at Central Station.
On the roads, thousands of motorists headed for the border. At 6am, there were 1,500 vehicles an hour on the A74 - a figure more usually seen at midday.
“There are no jams yet,” said a man from the AA, “but we are dreading the time when the Edinburgh folk on their way back meet the Glasgow folk about Gretna. This could cause serious traffic chaos.”
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