So I’ve been telling old stories, singing songs.. Caledonian, you’re calling me
The story goes that when the shipyards emptied along the banks of the lower Clyde, men caked in dirt and oil rolled as one into nearby bars to be met with tray upon tray of ready-poured tonic wine.
It’s a nostalgic thought but one which shouldn’t be overly sentimentalised – hard work and hard drinking led to a hard life for many of those in the homes these men rolled back to.
Like many a working-class town where the bonds of community are as tight as guide ropes on launch day, there can be a feeling of insularity to Port Glasgow.
The pubs in the Port might not exactly be destination boozers for out-of-towners. That said, the viral video posted last year y by roadtrippin’ Texan
Scott
Evans Andrews, when he gatecrashed a christening at the Comet Bar (known locally as the Widow’s, which perhaps tells its own story of working men lost to drink), might be a truer reflection of the comeall-ye spirit in these parts.
Where once shipyards roared, a monolithic retail park now stands, sucking the life from what was once a bustling high street of diverse shops. And so the opening last year of a wine bar in the middle of this strip of kebab shops and bookies was greeted with raised eyebrows. Except, it’s not a wine bar.
The decor might make nods to trendier saloons – booths, whisky-barrel tables and low-slung tungsten bulbs – but this is a local pub at the heart of a community that needed a new one.
On two fly-by visits, Pub Spy has experienced the Caly, as it’s become known, both as a relaxed bar with a welcoming late-afternoon conviviality and as a rammed-out end-ofthe-week hoedown with Rod Stewart tribute act James Frew needing security on the door. It’s not a space suited to live performance – what former bookies is – but that dampens neither the desire of the owners to put on entertainment nor the determination of the townsfolk to enjoy it.
They don’t build so many ships in the Port these days and the men don’t rush from the gates in a rolling wave of boilersuits and bunnets.
Ferguson’s is the only shipyard in Port Glasgow now and, after the torrid time they’ve had trying to build those CalMac ferries, Pub Spy wouldn’t begrudge a few of them a tray of Friday night tonic wine. Each.
But one thing that has endured against the odds in these parts is a sure sense of community and the thirst for a good night out. The Caly will do well from both.
Don’t just take Pub Spy’s word for it. Ask the biker from Texas at the bar.