Fort Augustus and Glenfinnan
This morning, from the top of the flight of locks at Fort Augustus, we transited the second half of the Caledonian Canal. One can only admire the engineering skill and audacity of Thomas Telford, the canal’s architect, who was born the son of a shepherd in rural Scotland in 1757 and never received any formal training as an engineer. Apprenticed as a stonemason, he worked on building bridges in Edinburgh and London before settling in Shrewsbury to work on larger projects, including his first canal. This canal project led on to his construction of the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, carrying the canal high over the river Dee in a cast iron trough. At the end of his career he had founded the Institute of Civil Engineers, constructing the world’s first suspension bridge over the Menai Strait in North Wales as well as overseeing the construction of the Caledonian Canal.
By the end of the morning we were moored above the Caledonian Canal’s most famous feature, the flight of eight sequential locks known as Neptune’s Staircase. It marks the beginning of the canal, which travels thought the Highlands of Scotland, connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the North Sea. Our morning cruise took us through some very scenic stretches of the canal, notably the narrow channel known as Laggan Avenue, linking the highest section of the canal at Loch Oich with Loch Lochy. The double lock at Gairlochy was a subsequent refinement to Telford’s original design after a single lock collapsed under the weight of an excess volume of water. Throughout the canal there is an excess supply of water, numerous weirs and sluices were constructed to drain water out of the canal on a regular basis.
In the afternoon, we rode by coach the short distance to Glenfinnan where ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ raised the standard of the Stuart cause at the start of the Jacobite rebellion in August 1745. He was the rightful heir to the throne, a Scot and also a Catholic, making his cause as popular in the Highlands of Scotland as it was intensely unpopular elsewhere. The National Trust for Scotland site once concentrated exclusively on ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’, but in recent years it has seen a rival attraction in the form of Harry Potter, for the Glenfinnan railway viaduct was featured in the first Harry Potter movie as the Hogwarts Express steamed across. From the visitor centre we offered a couple of walks, one concentrating of the native flora and the other on photography. Our National Geographic Expert, Iris Barry, was on hand at the Glenfinnan Monument to provide more detail on this romantic but ultimately disastrous episode in Highland history.
