Union Canal
Thirty-one lock-free miles on a single level from Edinburgh to Falkirk, Scotland's only contour canal
The Union Canal — the Scottish one, not the Grand Union Canal of England — runs 31 miles (51 km) from Lochrin Basin in Edinburgh west to Falkirk. Its distinction is that it has no locks at all along its length. It was built to follow the 73-metre contour the whole way, holding one level from end to end, which earned it the local name of the “mathematical river”. For a walker or cyclist that makes it one of the easiest towpaths in Scotland to follow, flat and unbroken from the city out into open country.
Keeping to a single level meant carrying the canal over every valley in its path, and it does so on a series of aqueducts: the eight-arched Slateford Aqueduct over the Water of Leith on the edge of Edinburgh, and the Avon Aqueduct near Linlithgow, the longest and tallest in Scotland. Near Falkirk the canal runs through a tunnel, dug because the owner of Callendar House refused to have the waterway cross his land in the open.
At Falkirk it meets the Forth & Clyde Canal. The two were once linked by a flight of eleven locks; today they are joined by the Falkirk Wheel, the rotating boat lift opened in 2002.
The canal opened in 1822, built to bring coal into Edinburgh and to connect the capital with Glasgow through the Forth & Clyde. Like the rest of the network it fell out of use once the railways came, and stretches were filled or built over. It was restored under the Millennium Link and reopened in 2001, complete once more from Edinburgh to the wheel.
