Page 7 - Microsoft Word - Guiding light final version 1855 1306.doc

Some 230 English bus companies were operating tours north of the border and it was calculated that at least 100,000 people from England and overseas including America, New Zealand and South Africa had visited Scotland that year.
Nicholson said a start had already been made in Edinburgh with the formation of a corps of voluntary guides who operated chiefly during the International Festival of Music and Drama. There was an increasing demand made on the Tourist Board for guides with a knowledge of the country’s history and customs, and although the board was sometimes able to supply them, the number of guides on its list was very small.
He thought that, this being a seasonal occupation, there would be difficulty in finding suitable people but, if Scotland developed the tourist industry, well informed guides with official status were bound to come.
How right he was but it was another ten years before he managed to get a scheme for Scotland off the ground.
According to STGA founder member Marie Frier, it was the established tourist guides in the city who were the driving force behind the creation of the new organisation.
In the 30th anniversary edition of the STGA’s then newsletter for members, Guidelines, Marie said she had worked as a representative of a London Travel Agent in Edinburgh in the 1950s.
‘It was, I feel, thanks to the Edinburgh International Festival that my firm began to organise package tours to Edinburgh which required guides,’ she said.
‘At that time, the 1950s, we depended on the wealthy American market, our friends from England, a few from Australia and even fewer from the Continent.’
‘The first ‘Guides’ were often colourful characters and included a Baillie of the city, a great orator who would commence his visit to St. Giles with a prayer, then Jock who carried a little cane and called his party ‘my children’, and ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ so called because he wore a kilt, a rare sight in those days.
‘I had to obtain guides and was fortunate in having many teacher friends who acted as guides for me at that time. I can assure you that good lung power and stamina were required as not many coaches had a microphone and certainly there was no seat beside the driver - you stood!
‘The City Tour comprised a visit to Edinburgh Castle, St. Giles Cathedral, Thistle Chapel, Parliament Hall, Holyrood Palace (where you did the James IV tower yourself) and the New Town, all for the princely sum of 15/- or perhaps one guinea!
’Many of my colleagues felt we should get together and form an association to put Guides on a professional basis, for there was no recognised scale of fees, and prices varied among Travel Agents.’
However another driving force for the creation of the new body was Edinburgh Corporation Transport which already operated driver guided tours in the city.
At least half of the first trainees of the STGA when it was founded in 1959 were bus drivers including Bill Combe who worked as a guide until he was 85 years old.
Bill was born in Edinburgh, but spent much of his childhood in the isolated, but beautiful, area around Loch Rannoch where his mother worked as a cook in a local hotel.
At the age of 16 he came back to Edinburgh to work in the yeast press at the McLaughlin Brewery at Craigmore. Later he did his national service with the Royal Navy spending much of his time in the Mediterranean on HMS Vanguard. The breweries in Edinburgh were starting to close down so Bill applied for a job as a bus conductor with Edinburgh Corporation and later became a driver.
As a young man Bill was already an avid reader of history books. One day when he was having a break and reading, Sandy Balderston, a senior colleague at Edinburgh Corporation Transport who taught driver guides on tourist buses came up to him and said: “I notice you are always reading. Join the classes and I will teach you how to become a tour guide.” ‘Sandy was one of the senior guides,’ explained Bill. ‘In these days they didn’t have any tests for guides and Sandy was one of the untouchables. The elite. There were six of them regularly on the tours at Waverley Bridge.’
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