Feature
Park & Pride
Want to get outdoors and celebrate what your park has to offer? Caroline Lindsay finds out more.
CELEBRATING Love Parks Week’s fifth birthday, organisers GreenSpace aim to gather one million people into parks and green spaces across the country.
Paul Bramhill of GreenSpace, explains, “Love Parks Week
(July 23–31) encourages friends, families, the young and old, to come together and enjoy what our parks and green spaces offer — opportunities for friendships, education, health, exercise and simple play and fun.”
Sunday Post readers share special memories of their local park . . .
Duthie Park, Aberdeen
Frank Duncan got married to his second wife Lynn in the glass pavilion in the Winter Gardens in 1994. He already had very happy memories of the park, as he used to go walking there with his late wife Mary, whom he met at the age of 17.
“Our wedding day was such a lovely occasion,” remembers Frank. “At the time, my late brother worked in the restaurant there and we were on first name terms with all the staff. We had a meal, and then a disco at night and because the floor was paving slabs, the bridesmaids took their shoes off to dance!
“Lynn and I still visit the park every day to take our dogs Shiloh and Buddy on their walk — we just love it.”
Kelvingrove Park, Glasgow
“The charity fun days for children, held at the bandstand in the 1990s, were great fun and raised money for Radio Lollipop,” recalls Ed Gillett, secretary of Friends of Kelvingrove Park.
“The artist and sculptor George Wyllie would bring a tuba and hang it on the bandstand’s gates, with a rubber hose attached to its mouthpiece. Throughout the day loads of children attempted to get a note out of the tuba but only a triumphant few produced a successful blast of sound!
“Although the bandstand has been a bit neglected in the intervening years, the park is more popular than ever — lending weight to the local people’s campaign to get the building restored.”
Braidburn Valley Park, Edinburgh
“It’s such a wonderful park, full of memories of my happy childhood and teenage years in the 1960s,” says Ann
Marris.
“I regularly walk through the park enjoying the scenery and reliving wading through the burn in blue plastic sandals armed with a fishing net and jam jar with a string handle trying to catch tiddlers. My sister and I had lots of friends in the Braidburn and it was a normal pastime in the school summer holidays.
“As a teenager the highlight was walking home with friends enjoying the fish and chips we’d bought on our way home from the Greenhill club at Churchill. Life was so innocent then in the 1960s for a 15-year-old.
“Nowadays my walks are more about keeping fit and enjoying the scenery and good weather. There are lots of dog walkers and also young children with their parents walking home from school or enjoying a bike ride, or, in the winter, sledging down the hills as I also did.
“This beautiful and historic park evokes such wonderful memories of idyllic school summer holidays for us nearly 60
somethings.”
Brian Smith from Edinburgh decided to take advantage of last winter’s heavy snow by teaching himself to snowboard at the age of 50 at Braidburn Valley Park, which his house overlooks.
“My son Angus was away at uni and had left his snowboard at home. On a whim I took it to the park one evening and practised in the dark so no one could see me fall over! When Angus came home the next week we went back to the park and he gave me a lesson. We went skiing in February so I had another practice and will definitely take it up again if we get more snow next winter. My aim is to be able to snowboard all the way down the hill at the park!
“I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would and it really did feel as if the Alps had been transported to suburban Edinburgh for one delightful evening — surreal and magical.”
www.braidburnvalleypark.org.uk
Baxter Park, Dundee
Donald Suttie has Baxter Park to thank for his son’s successful career as a photographer! Donald works for Dundee City Council and on the spur of the moment decided to enter a photographic competition run jointly between the Council and Friends of Baxter Park.
“I’ve been a keen amateur photographer since the ’80s and decided to enter a picture of the park I’d taken one day when it was deserted and tranquil (above). To my amazement it won and, as a result, my son Gregor, who was just about to leave school, started to get very interested in photography,” he says.
“When the Queen came to reopen Baxter Park in 2007, following its refurbishment, I had an official invitation to the event but Gregor didn’t, yet he managed to get a much better picture of the Queen than I did (above right) — so good, in fact, that a major photographic agency had it on licence for a year! Since then Gregor has gone on to carve out a really good career for himself and photographed the likes of Samuel L. Jackson and Hugh Grant.”
