Published in Scotland Magazine Issue 34 on 30/08/2007.

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West from the Falkirk Wheel

Ian R Mitchell explores Scotland’s reborn Forth & Clyde canal

It is easy to close a canal, much harder to re-open it. Finished in the 1790s, the Forth & Clyde Canal was the artery of Scotland’s Industrial Revolution. Largely devoted to carrying commercial freight, as this declined so too did the canal and it was closed in 1962, large sections being subsequently infilled or overbuilt. For three decades it was forgotten.

Increasing recreational usage and the restoration of sections of the canal led to the ambitious project to re-open it along its entire length, as a Millennium Project, reinstating locks, repairing canal banks and developing an infrastructure for recreational boating use.

After an expenditure in excess of £84 million, the canal was eventually re-opened in 2001.

Although the term Forth and Clyde is used to designate the 37 miles from Bowling on the Clyde to Grangemouth on the Forth, the network of reopened Scottish canals is greater, including as it does the Union Canal into Edinburgh, and the branch line off the Forth & Clyde into Glasgow, making it now possible to visit Scotland’s two great cities by pleasure craft. The hub of the canal system, where the Union joins the Forth & Clyde, is the town of Falkirk. Here are based many of the companies offering boat hire on the canal, as well as the unmissable Falkirk Wheel, where 21st century engineering has been applied to solve one of the problems created by the restoration of an 18th century canal.

Originally the Union was joined to the Forth and Clyde by 11 locks over 35.....

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By Ian R Mitchell

Section : Scotland Waterways

Page number : 42