Scotland's Millennium Canals

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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.