Page 12 - Microsoft Word - Guiding lights final version 1127 0707 big print.doc

‘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.’
Bill became one of the first guides to qualify under a scheme devised by the newly formed Scottish Tourist Guides Association.
Guidelines published the story of its foundation nine years later.
‘In 1959 The Scottish Tourist Board took the initiative in setting up, under the aegis of the board (which consisted of three persons) the Scottish Tourist Guides Association,’ it reported.
‘Until then there was no standard for professional tourist guides in Scotland although, of course, professional guides did operate,’ said the article.
‘Their standards of competency, as might be expected, varied very widely.’
12