As the rivers rise, three brave women try out a difficult balancing act

YOU might not immediately recognise the spot. This is the River Kelvin in Kelvingrove Park near the bandstand in Glasgow when it was at its highest level for 20 years due to almost constant rain for a week in October, 1954.

It always helps to have some people in a picture and somehow the Evening Times photographer has convinced these “young ladies” as he describes them on the obverse to wade out and pose on the fence.

The paper claimed that the girls had to climb the railings to get over the flooded pathway, but we suspect they were just trying to help the snapper.

Naturally, the newspaper described the Kelvin as a “raging torrent” which is our go-to description of rivers after a bit of rain.

Elsewhere in Scotland, a “20 ton” landslide had blocked the Edinburgh to Carlisle road, although how the Evening Times reached that figure was not explained.

A 76-year-old woman had to be rescued from her home in Dumfriesshire, and the bodies of drowned sheep were spotted in the Firth of Clyde.

In Glasgow, Duke Street was closed due to flooding, and trains into Queen Street were disrupted for about an hour.

“Today was flood day in Scotland” recorded the newspaper, but you sensed that they were really hoping that the disruption was worse than it was. Three women posing on a fence is not really the carnage that the editor of an evening paper is secretly craving.

Copies of our archive photographs can be purchased by emailing photoenquiries@heraldandtimes.co.uk or via our website www.thepicturedesk.co.uk