Experience of the new

I have been having a little adventure this week. They say that to keep life interesting one should visit somewhere new at least once a year. This is one of my days - visiting somewhere new yet familiar!

Well, last Wednesday, I travelled from Bowling on the Clyde [West of Glasgow] to nearly Glasgow City centre. What is so unusual about that you may say? I admit I have already travelled between those points before in the car more than once before in my life. However this time I was travelling by boat, and it was NOT up the River Clyde. We, [ the community project I work for] were bringing a newly refurbished boat up to our base in Glasgow, where we intend to use her for day sails for the public and booked groups.
I was on the Forth and Clyde Canal which winds its way from Bowling, through Old Kilpatrick, under the Erskine bridge, and up to Dalmuir, Clydebank, Drumchapel, Anniesland, Maryhill, nearly to Glasgow City Centre. We went through a couple of locks, two ‘bascule’ bridges [footbridges which split and lift up either side of the canal] and a swing bridge between Bowling Harbour and Dalmuir. When we reached Dalmuir we went through the British Waterways ‘drop-lock’. This is where the canal goes under the main road for the area, but the canal does not go up or down a level. Rather than have a bridge which could open restricting the HEAVY main road traffic, British Waterways decided that the boats would have to get under the bridge. This is how they do that. The canal boats enter the large lock, ‘tie up’, and wait for the water to be pumped out into a tank. When this is done the boat then sails under its own power under the bridge [which carries the main road], to the other side of the lock where it again ‘ties up’ whilst the water is then pumped back into the lock from the tank! The gates are then opened and the boat sails out of the lock on the canal still at the same height as before. [Most locks are used for travelling up or down hills for those who do not know.] From Dalmuir it was a short sail to Clydebank, where we had planned to stop anyway for a lunch break, once we had gone through a couple of lifting footbridges. These are right at the Clydebank shopping centre and are in constant use by the pedestrians travelling from one side of the covered shopping area to the other (under a covered walkway). Unfortunately, BW were having a problem with a sensor on the bridge, and they could not get it to open up – so we had to wait for an engineer to come and fix the ‘electrical’ problem. It did give us time to have our lunch however, and they only took an hour or so to get the bridge fixed [about 45 minutes waiting for the engineer & 15 to get it operating safely!]
From Clydebank we headed up past the old Singer Sewing Machine Factory – [they used to catch huge goldfish in the canal in the 50’s/60’s when the factory used canal water for cooling their machinery and pumped it back into the canal a lot warmer than it came out. They think that the goldfish came from ‘carnival’ fish which people released into the canal when they didn’t want to keep their kid’s ‘prize’ or they grew too large for bowls, etc.. Just past the factory we started to enter the ‘lock’ system with a vengeance - lots of locks in relatively quick succession – but only short ‘flights’. We sailed along through Drumchapel, the new stretch of canal at Blairdardie, and up through the housing estates of the 50’s and 60’s , and passing the brand new ‘canalside locations’ of the last couple of years, into Anniesland. We had a quick ‘maintenance halt’ just before Lock 27, where there is a new BW facilities block – providing toilets, showers and laundry facilities for boats which moor over night. [There is also a very popular inn there called ‘Lock 27’ which has excellent food - but we did not have time to stop as we wanted to reach Glasgow before evening. The BW staff were excellent, doing all the heavy work at every lock, while we had only to keep the boat moored to the side whilst the locks filled up [not quite as simple as it sounds – but a great experience.] After Lock 27 [& 26 soon after] the last flight of Locks appeared. These are reached after crossing over the Kelvin Aquaduct which carries the canal over the River Kelvin. When it was first built the aquaduct was the engineering marvel of its time, and was very popular with tourists, in the same way that people now flock to see the Falkirk Wheel or the London Eye for example. At the end of the Aquaduct the Maryhill flight starts.

Five locks which not only takes the canal up to the '‘summit'’ level but also turns a corner in the process. We reached this point about four o’clock in the afternoon, and had a couple of school boys come and watch the process of the boat going through a lock.

This was only unusual in that the weather was not the best on Wednesday to say the least. It had been raining since we had left the harbour basin at Bowling and had not stopped at all for the whole day!! It had been a little lighter and, [usually when we were at the locks] a lot heavier with some torrential downpours during the day. We were soaked through despite wearing ‘waterproof’ clothing, and the squads from British Waterways were also looking drenched by the end of the day [we had had 3 ‘squads’ of lengthsmen assisting us on our journey up]. SO the fact that two schoolboys stood in the pouring rain to watch us travel by shows their curiosity level!! From Maryhill we were on the ‘summit level’ [no more locks for several miles – almost to Bonnybridge in the east]. We were heading for the Glasgow Branch however and at Stockingfield Junction we headed right . Down the canal parallel to Maryhill Road, past Ruchill, and the new building sites – one on the old McLellan Rubber Factory site, and another set of 6 storey ‘luxury’ flats on the site of four former bungalows, near Murano Street [ and the student village on the other side of the canal]. Down past Firhill Basin and Partick Thistle’s football ground, and finally into Applecross Basin for half past five at night – and it was still raining!!!.

We tied up there, and headed home – to hot showers and baths!!!
The pictures I have included were taken in slightly better weather last year [2004]