Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
cutting the time to Glasgow to seven hours. The locks were filled in 1933, severing the route.
The canal was closed to through navigation in 1965.
Today the Union Canal is complete once again. It runs as a top pound at a single 73m level
for 50km from Edinburgh to Falkirk and locks take it down to the Falkirk Wheel and the
descent to the Forth & Clyde Canal. As a contour canal, it was nicknamed the Mathematical
River.
The Falkirk Wheel in the process of rotating
.
It was from Gray's Mill that Prince Charlie successfully ordered Edinburgh to surrender
in 1745. After the Water of Leith visitor centre, it is followed by the eight-arched Slateford
Aqueduct just round the corner, 183m long and 20m high over the Water of Leith. It uses 15m
arches, which are the same size as those on the other river crossings, as well as the same iron
troughs, which are wider at the invert than at the top. Telford's hollow piers are used although
he did not agree with Baird's need for masonry supports to the iron troughs.
A 4m elm sculpture by Robert Coia shows Burke and Hare, two Ulstermen working on
the canal. They developed a sideline of selling bodies for medical research but, instead of
bodysnatching, they murdered their victims, about 18 in all. Burke was hanged but Hare was
released after turning king's evidence.
In 1834, John Scott Russell, the engineer, mathematician and natural philosopher, was
watching a barge being drawn by two horses in the vicinity of a bridge at Long Hermiston.
The horses and barge stopped but a 300-400mm high wave broke free from the front of the
barge and carried on at some 14km/h. Russell followed it on horseback for 2-3km before
losing it round a series of bends. As a result of this incident he published his Theory of the
Solitary Wave or the soliton, a principle that is now known to have widespread application in
the natural sciences.
