Scotland's Millennium Canals

More about the book

In the late eighteenth century, Scottish men of commerce envisioned goods moving easily from sea to sea and city to city. Instead of being carted at a snail's pace on rough unmade roads in tiny quantities, wheat, sugar, salt and more would move in bulk and at speed. So the Forth & Clyde Canal was born, with profit as its motive and Glasgow as its focus. Later, the Union Canal was constructed, completing the network by providing a link from Edinburgh to the Forth & Clyde Canal at Falkirk. But the Great War closed the ports on the Forth, and afterwards metalled roads and powerful lorries killed the canals commercially. By the mid-1960s both were closed but now, after over thirty years of campaigning and an ambitious £78 million Millennium Lottery Fund application, Scotland's Millennium Canals have been reborn, with the Falkirk Wheel, a giant rotating boat-lift, as their centrepiece. This lovely books tells that story.