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But by 1968 the STB was once again organising the classes and there is nothing in the annals to explain why.
Michael Glen had replaced Douglas Russell as head of STB’s Information Department when he retired that year.
‘Douglas who was a man of the old school,’ he said. ‘It was a hard act to follow.
I was 27 or thereabout and he was 60 something and had been responsible for managing but not doing the training of the tourists guides. I was not particularly close to the STGA. My job amongst myriad things was to co-ordinate the classes that were run first of all by Dr Barclay and latterly by Basil Skinner.
‘I can’t remember how much organising I did. I must have liaised with the guides who at that time were split into an Edinburgh group which was the biggest group and a Glasgow group but I am not sure they conversed very greatly at that point. They were 45 miles away from each other and that was a long way in those days. And Glasgow and Edinburgh were very different. Glasgow guides I think dealt mainly with Burns Country and Loch Lomond.
Glasgow wasn’t regarded very much as a tourist attraction in its own right in those days. Oh, how things have changed. There was also a loosely-organised group up north as I remember.’
In 1969 recognition of the importance of tourism to the UK economy came in the form of The Development of Tourism Act (1969), which resulted in the Scottish Tourist Board becoming a statutory rather than a voluntary body and its future impact was going to have dramatic results for the growth of guiding in Scotland.
The second version of the Blue Badge
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