A personal PhotoChallenge matching a story to a photo every day for 30 days with short tales of travel, mountaineering, Nepal, art, and a few personal ones too!

Wastwater, Cumbria

17. Disaster in Glasgow!

Great Gable, the iconic perfect mountain shaped peak at the head of Wasdale, I’d been up this mountain many times growing up in the area and had brought my “bride to be” to my home for a day out! It was 2nd January, 1971, all,the surrounding peaks covered in snow and ice, not a day for “ordinary hikers”, but a beautiful day for relatively experienced mountaineers.

Great Gable summit, January 1971

Beautiful that is, until we got back down to our car around 5pm and sat horrified listening to the sports news that 66 people had died at a football match in Glasgow where we were still postgraduate students at the University of Strathclyde. We had friends who were regular supporters of Rangers or Celtic, had they attended, were they there today, all questions that raced through our minds. No mobile phones in those days and it was several days later we found them all to be safe and well. It’s one of those days like Kennedy’s assassination, we all knew where we were on that day!

Footnote

“The 1971 Ibrox disaster was a crush among the crowd at an Old Firm football game, which led to 66 deaths and more than 200 injuries. It happened on 2 January 1971 in an exit stairway at Ibrox Park (now Ibrox Stadium) in Glasgow, Scotland. It was the worst British football disaster until the Hillsborough disaster in Sheffield, England, in 1989.”

Categories: Photography

Tags: 30 day blogging, 30 day challenge, Glasgow, great gable, Ibrox, Ibrox disaster, memories, Mountains, personal challenge, personal life, photochallenge, Photography, photostories, themindfulcamera, travel tales, wasdale, Wastwater