IT'S getting closer.
The Commonwealth Games baton yesterday travelled nearer to its final destination in Glasgow as it made its way around Inverclyde.
Hundreds of years ago boats left from this coast to trade sugar, tobacco and slaves. Yesterday a more palatable version of Commonwealth links was on show as athletes, campaigners and even the odd TV celebrity got the chance to carry the baton as crowds gathered under slate grey skies and, as the day wore on, teeming rain, determined to ensure the weather wouldn't spoil their day.
Day 31 of the Queen's Baton Relay saw the baton make its way first thing from the Isle of Bute by ferry to the mainland. It made its way to Inverkip and then to Gourock and Greenock, before rising up into the hills above the Clyde to Quarrier's Village and Kilmalcolm, then descending into Port Glasgow and back to Greenock for the evening's festivities.
In Inverkip, John Muir carried the baton on the seventh anniversary of the death of his son Damien in an unprovoked knife attack. In the years since Mr Muir has campaigned vigorously to ensure others don't have to go through what he did. Carrying the baton yesterday of all days was, he admitted, poignant for both him and his family. But yesterday's experience, he said, was "absolutely stunning".
Mr Muir, 75, was proud to carry the baton. He said: "For a very short time today I was the custodian of the Queen's letter and I'm very proud to have been given the opportunity to take it through and pass it on to the next person who will do the same until the Queen comes to the Games and reads the letter out."
At 10.32am Sean O'Connor carried the baton into Ravenscraig Stadium, Greenock, where it was greeted by hordes of enthusiastic children, many in facemasks in honour of Games mascot Clyde. They were joined by local councillors, a minister and one boy in a Morton top.
"I live close by so it was brilliant to run through my local community," Mr O'Connor said after he had finished his duties. "It was such a rush running into this stadium."
He is a community worker in the area. "It's four days a week doing solid youth work. When I was growing up people helped me and I just wanted to give something back."
O'Connor, by the way, is all of 18 now. "I've still got some growing to do," he admits.
His baton duty done he could look forward to the Games themselves. "I've got tickets to the athletics. Not the finals, but that will be good to see. Hopefully, I'll get a wee glimpse of Usain Bolt." With that he was off to get a picture taken with Duncan Bannatyne.
As late morning turned to afternoon, weary-looking teenagers stumbled off buses from T in the Park not long before the baton was being carried around Port Glasgow by a pair of 14-year-old twins, Lewis and Fraser McCulloch.
Both brothers were born deaf but they have developed the ability to speak, proof of their own battling qualities. .
Champion weightlifter George Byng was scheduled to take the baton onto the stage in Battery Park as the day in Inverclyde came to its climax. The X Factor's Nicholas McDonald was the headline act.
Of all the day's memories perhaps one of the smaller ones will linger most. At Quarrier's Village one very new baby being carried around in her carrycot was managing somehow to sleep through the hubbub.
"She'll not remember any of this," a passer-by told her father. Perhaps not, but each time the Games comes round her dad will remind her she was there.
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