The Gourock Outdoor Pool draws its water straight from the Firth of Clyde, heats it to a minimum of 29 degrees, and has been doing so, in one form or another, since 1909. It is a saltwater lido, 33.3 metres long and 3.5 metres deep — dug that deep for water polo — and it is the oldest heated swimming pool in Scotland. It opens in May and closes in the first week of September, which means you are swimming outdoors in the west of Scotland by choice. Martin Parr photographed it in 2004, and Blur put the picture on the cover of an album in 2023.
The town sits on the east shore of the upper Firth of Clyde, running west out of Greenock, and faces across the water to Dunoon and the Argyll hills. The waterfront is the front. The A770 shore road follows it, the promenade runs along Ashton, and the pier is the headquarters of CalMac, whose passenger ferries cross to Dunoon and Kilcreggan. The Western Ferries car ferry goes from McInroy's Point to Hunter's Quay.
The Victoria Bar, known as the Vic, is one of the oldest pubs in Gourock — an eighteenth-century building that began as the George Hotel and now pours Belhaven. Café Continental, on Kempock Street, has been a community bar and restaurant for over a hundred years. The River Gourock, on the waterfront, puts on music and events.
For fish, the Wee Chippy on Shore Street trades on the fish rather than the surroundings; the decor is early post-war and the fish is fresh. West of town at Lunderston Bay, Cardwell Garden Centre has been a family business since 1962, with a café, garden supplies and gifts.
Above the town, Lyle Hill carries the Free French Memorial — an anchor shaped as the Cross of Lorraine, about thirty feet high and whitewashed, put up in 1946 for the Free French Navy sailors who were based on the Clyde and died in the Battle of the Atlantic. From Craigs Top, 426 feet up, Arran is visible on a clear day, some 45 miles south. West along the coast a footpath runs to Cloch Point, where the lighthouse has stood since 1797.
On the cliff behind Kempock Street stands the Granny Kempock Stone, a grey mica-schist monolith about six feet tall and roughly four thousand years old. Sailors and courting couples walked round it seven times for luck before a voyage or a wedding. Reverend Macrae recorded that "marriages in the District were not regarded as lucky unless the wedded pair passed round the 'lang stane.'" In 1662 Marie Lamont and other local women were executed for witchcraft after allegedly dancing round it, said to be intending to curse and sink shipping on the Clyde.
Trains leave from Gourock station at the Pierhead, running about every half hour to Glasgow Central on a line electrified in 1967. The Old Gourock and Ashton Parish Church on Royal Street was dedicated in 1832; its pulpit and choir stalls were designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh around 1900.
Near the front sits Wee Annie, a small bronze girl on a suitcase, made by Angela Hunter in 2011 for the days when Glasgow came doon the watter to the pier for the summer.