Ever since our visit to the Scottish Maritime Museum in Irvine in March, John has been itching to visit its other site at Dumbarton, the Denny Tank. The book of Clyde walks we’ve been using recently includes a 5 mile circuit of Dumbarton, so it was conceded that we could visit the tank and do the walk at the same time. But, oh look! It says café. So, of course, we had to have lunch before exploring the museum.

William Denny & Brothers’ innovative, experimental approach made waves in the shipbuilding industry from the 1800s to 1963. (Don’t blame me for the terrible pun, that’s from the museum’s website.) They built the world’s first commercial ship model experiment tank which you can still see in situ, along with associated workshops.

Denny Tank

Denny Tank

Denny Tank

Denny Tank

Ho hum, that bit wasn’t really for me, but when we got upstairs to the offices I was much more interested. I’m not usually into model ships either, but this is none other than the Cutty Sark which was built by Denny & Brothers. The cat’s head is a genuine carving from the ship.

Cutty Sark model

Cutty Sark model

Cutty Sark cat’s head

I got really excited by this next bit, though – a Banda machine! If you don’t recognise the name, you might know it as a Ditto machine in North America or Roneo in France and Australia. Bandas were spirit duplicators, and as soon as I saw this I was taken right back to my school days. The pong. The pale purple print. The primitive technology!

Banda machine

Banda machine

Also in the offices were these large boxes – Deacon Boxes – containing graphs from over 300,000 individual ship model experiments carried out in the tank. Honestly, the whole place looked as though the workforce could come back in and get on with the job at any time.

Offices

Deacon boxes

That workforce was strictly demarcated by sex, although Denny was one of the first shipbuilding firms to employ women. The men would be downstairs doing the experiments, the women would be upstairs in the offices working as tracer / analysts. I love finding out about the history of women’s lives and how things have changed. They all look so happy in these pictures.

Women workers

Women workers

Women workers

Women workers

If you’re still with me after all that, it’s time to get some fresh air. From the museum, we headed down towards Dumbarton Castle on its plug of volcanic rock where the River Leven flows into the Clyde. The riverside path boasted a CD tree and some fairy doors!

Dumbarton Rock

Castle Circular Path

Castle Circular Path

Castle Circular Path

Castle Circular Path

View of Erskine Bridge

From here, we looped back into town to the Municipal Buildings. The archway is all that remains of St Mary’s Collegiate Church, founded in 1453 (although the arch has moved twice since then). The statue is Peter Denny, one of the shipbuilding brothers.

Municipal buildings

Arch

Peter Denny statue

Our route then took us down to the River Leven. From the bridge we got a view of Dumbarton Rock again, this time from its other side.

River Leven

Dumbarton Castle

On the other bank of the Leven we walked through Levengrove Park.

Levengrove Park

Levengrove Park

War Memorial

The view to the Rock and Castle was stunning.

Next, we retraced our steps to the bridge. Some of the boats looked as if they needed some attention…..

River Leven

Boat with Chinese name

Abandoned boat

Our car was parked near the red sandstone ruin in the gallery above, the last remaining part of the former Inverleven Distillery. We returned home tired but happy after a good mix of culture and exercise.

I’m linking this post to Jo’s Monday Walks. This week she has a lovely garden for you, plus her usual international band of cyber-walkers. All welcome!