Quotes from an interview with  Jill Shand

‘I’ve been coming to Arran since I was six months old; my grandfather came first in 1890 and that was to Sannox. My husband’s family came to Whiting Bay for their holiday so once we were married that was it – we always came to Whiting Bay’.

‘What I remember as a child was the fishing, there were rowing boats galore around the jetty. Everyone went fishing and then you’d come back in the evening and smoked it to cook it, mackerel – that was what we caught, and there was plenty of them’.

‘We had the Invermay Hotel for eighteen years. Visitors used to come for the whole two weeks – that was their holiday, they didn’t go abroad in those days. At the end of the fortnight they’d say to each other – “are you coming back next year?” They’d got so friendly, you see, so then they’d book for the same two weeks next again year’.

‘We’d have a cup of tea at supper time, round 10pm, in the lounge of the hotel and we’d introduce them to each other and then they’d all swap stories, advice about where to go and they’d all talk to each other. We did a lot of talking back then…’

‘We had a lot of fun back in those days (1950/1960s). That’s what I remember – that it was fun. There were always people about on the streets, sitting outside the hotels for hours in the evenings, walking about near the pier, going to the dances at the village hall. It was fun – talking, laughter, you know…there was always something going on’.

‘The cinema at the village hall – that was well-attended. You queued up and you brought your own cushion with you to sit on – you had to – the seats were that hard!’

‘The pier was the centre of the whole village and it brought a lot of people here. There were cars coming up from the hotels in Kildonan – the Breadalbane, the Kildonan Hotels, to take people down for trips or taking them to and from the boats.

There were excellent hotels and boarding houses in Whiting Bay too. And we had so many shops – the butchers, two banks, two clothes shops and grocers – you never had to leave the village’.

‘There was a lot for visitors to do in the summer – swimming, tennis, golf, the dances.

The big boarding houses along the main road, the Burlington and all those, used to have groups of young men and women staying – they used to sit outside until late after a day out walking or on the beach’.

Glen and Bute.   

Whiting Bay Memories would like to thank Jill for her wonderful memories.