THE ARRAN BANNER 20 YEARS AGO
Saturday July 18, 1998
Quick thinking
A nine-year-old boy is improving in hospital in Glasgow after a youth may have saved his life by giving him the kiss of life. The injured boy had fallen off the roof of the Douglas Hotel in Brodick on Wednesday. Andrew Kirk, who has just left school in Kilmaurs and is working at the Douglas Hotel over the summer, discovered the boy lying on the ground with a huge lump on his head. Seeing another boy on the roof in hysterics, he realised the boy had fallen. Realising that the boy was falling in and out of consciousness he alerted others to raise the alarm and recognising that the boy needed immediate treatment, he decided to act.
Soon the ambulance arrived and the boy was taken to Lamlash where he was airlifted to the Southern General Hospital in Glasgow with serious head injuries. Amazingly the two boys, who were both nine years old had travelled to Arran from Kilmarnock on their own. By Friday the injured boy’s condition was improving while the friend was taken charge of by social workers.
Missing visitors
Looking along the front at Brodick this week – one thing is particularly striking – the apparent lack of visitors which has given rise to concerns about this year’s tourist season.
Provisional figures from Caledonian MacBrayne make for uncomfortable reading, a 13.6 per cent drop in passenger numbers and a 14.6 per cent drop in vehicle numbers in comparison with figures from July last year. The coach tours operated by Stagecoach, around the island to Brodick Castle and by open top bus, have carried 20 per cent fewer passengers than last year. Alastair Dobson at Arran Dairies reports a 12 per cent fall in sales compared to last year.
Several possible explanations have been offered for the decline in numbers, with everything from increased ferry travel prices to the weather to the price of cheap holidays abroad owing to the strong pound. Whatever the real reasons – many blame the World Cup in France for it – the truth is that the tourist industry rises and falls and that annual figures from the Scottish Tourist Board’s annual report shows that the tourist industry is currently on the wane across the whole of Scotland.
Ferry promotion
In an effort to attract further visitors, a local management team made up of skippers, pier manager and chief steward, have come up with a 7-2-7 fare. This will allow people to bring their car to Arran for the day at a reasonable cost. For £45 they can have a return car fare plus two adults plus full breakfast. Being 7-2-7 this has to be on the 7am sailing from Ardrossan and returning on the 7.20pm ferry from Brodick. Broadly it offers a full day out for two plus car plus breakfast for no more than the standard car only fare.