Your memories: 'Granton felt like the countryside'

WHEN Rob Ramage was a child he would wait eagerly at Granton Harbour for his dad to return home from sea. A trawlerman by trade, he would often be away for ten days at a time, leaving Rob and his older sister at home with their mum in Craigour.

But on the day he was due back, Rob would hang around impatiently at the harbour, later heading up to his granny's house on Wardieburn Road where the family would enjoy a meal together and hear stories from his dad's adventures on the waves.

"I was just a young boy and my sister and I would meet him at the harbour," says Rob, 59, who now lives in Bonnyrigg.

"We always played on the steep steps while we were waiting, which for a child, was climbing a mountain!"

The children would take a number 17 bus down to Granton, desperate to catch a glimpse of their father as he made his way off his boat.

"Later, we would always head to the Jubilee chip shop for tea, getting a fish supper there and then eating it at my Granny Thompson's house. It's still there actually."

Rob, who works with the AA, remembers Granton feeling like the "countryside" for a young boy from the city.

"I just loved it," he says. "Granton was where my parents came from originally, before they moved into Edinburgh."

Fascinated by its fishing activity, his father once took Rob and his sister out to sea with him, allowing them a taste of life on the water and a glimpse of his job. "It was just a short test sail, but we went out on the Forth and made our way around the Bass Rock," he says. "We loved it."

Now a father, and a grandfather, Rob recently took his two grandsons to Granton to show them where he spent much of his childhood, playing at the harbour and on the streets surrounding his granny's home.

"I showed them where I used to go, but I don't really think they were that interested!" he laughs.