Glasgow isn’t renkowned for it’s beaches (having none!) but these days sand is commonly dumped in urban locations to provide a temporary beach for all those unfortunate inland city dwellers.

As part of the Glasgow River Festival 2008, the Glasgow Fair holiday weekend of July 19th & 20th saw a temporary beach volleyball court set up in the SECC carpark next to the River Clyde. Organised by the Urban Beach team alongside Beach Volleyball Scotland the event included Beach Kids coaching and Beach 4s. Long weekend lie-ins meant I only made it along to watch some of the Mens semis on the Saturday and the Mens & Womens Elite finals on the Sunday afternoon.

I’m not a big sports fan but I’ve always enjoyed the challenge of taking photos of sporting events and beach volleyball must be one of the best. The cliched expectations appear to be true and it’s a sport where the competitors tend towards being amongst the beautiful people – no doubt from spending plenty of time outdoors and it goes without saying they’re all fit! Beach volleyball is quite an easy sport to watch, the rules being the same as any other volleyball match I assume – a combination of tennis and basketball to my untrained perception.

In the end the mens matches proved easier to get pictures of being more desicive and falling into the routine of serve, set and spike it was quite easy to predict when and where the good photos would most likely be after watching one game. The womens elite final was more scrappy, more entertaining for the novice watcher in it’s back & forth points and there’s no denying the attraction of watching fit sports women compete in bikinis.

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Well done to Barry McGuigan & Graham Riddle for winning the Mens Elite final and to Mel Coutts & Eilidh Smith for taking first place in the Womens Elite.