SCOTTISH LOWLAND CANALS: IN CRISIS?

摘要

The Scottish Lowland canals were seen as one of the great success stories of the waterway restoration movement - and in terms of mileage and cost, the greatest achievement of the 'Millennium Boom' series of waterway openings. The Forth & Clyde Canal had been abandoned in the 1960s when the inconvenience of all the opening bridges was felt to outweigh its usefulness for getting small sea-going vessels from coast to coast (and inland pleasure boating had yet to catch on), while the Union Canal's link to Edinburgh had been severed even earlier by the demolition of the connecting flight of locks near Falkirk. Following many years of campaigning and local revivals and reopenings by groups such as the Linlithgow Union Canal Society and the Forth & Clyde Canal Society, both canals were completed - including new road crossings, reinstatement of filled-in sections, and diversions around obstructions - at a cost of the best part of £100m, thanks to the Millennium Fund, European and Scottish funding. The crowning achievement was the opening in 2002 of the remarkable Falkirk Wheel, the world's only rotating boat lift and a new Scottish icon, at the heart of a reborn canal system which connected the country's two greatest cities to its East and West coasts - and looked to have a bright future.