retiredmartin

July 2025. Clydebank.

This is the blog that aims to get you to cancel your holiday in the Canaries or Cambridge, and instead to Coatbridge and Clydebank. It may be the only blog with that aim.

It wasn’t just nervousness about leaving curry stains on Duncan and Rikke’s tartan carpet that sold that Clydebank (actually Yoker, but who’s counting) hotel to me. I needed to see a place only in the consciousness to do a nomadic footballing existence akin to Wimbledon.

In the morning, rejoicing in my ability to avoid a lamb bhuna disaster on my clean sheets, and only a little upset to note how rapidly poppadoms wilt overnight, I did the culture. A town of 25,620 souls, home to Curry-Heute, must have culture.

Well, it all centres on the shipyards and a skyline dominated by the Titan crane, but just as fascinating to note the modern flats. 20 minutes by rail out from Glasgow Central, with Overtone Brewing on the doorstep, it’s an attractive suburb.

OK, a memorial to the victims of asbestosis won’t be top of the list on the estate agents blurb,

but there’s some handsome architecture,

notably the town hall whose Singer exhibition I inexplicably missed.

Note the gorgeous war memorial.

The town’s claims to fame are captured on the inevitable stickers,

though I’m sure Buckfast is from Devon. Perhaps the highest concentration of tonic wine drinkers live here.

From Buckfast to backsliders, and one of the UK’s top Sally Army corps,

though it’s the sprawling Co-op that takes centre stage in the shopping arcade,

note the skylit dome. Make a great Spoons.

Best of all, Wet Wet Wet left town in 1982 and have never been back, so it’s completely safe to visit Clydebank.

Just don’t wear an Airdrie shirt.