Go East >The Forth and Clyde Canal - Bowling to Temple
Click here to view the photographs of this section of canal
The little village of Bowling where the canal meets the Clyde has something for everyone, at least from a canal point of view. For boaters, there is the inviting canal leading east all the way to the other side of the country, and some basins for moorings. For those interested in the mechanics of the canal, there are original locks and bridges maintained in working order (even when the rest of the canal was closed, this bit remained in use). For walkers and cyclists there is a good towpath leading eastwards at this point, an almost uninterrupted route to Glasgow, and beyond to Kirkintilloch, Falkirk, and even along the Union Canal to Edinburgh. All this combined with the rural feel and the sight of the Kilpatrick Hills to the north make this one of the most pleasant sections of canal in Scotland.
Bowling Basin on a crisp November morning
Heading eastwards, the first few miles of canal have a peaceful rural feel to them, and there are a few authentic wooden bascule bridges which will provide a novelty for the boaters to operate. A smartly painted steel swing bridge carries the old Erskine Ferry Road, while the Erskine suspension bridge, which replaced the Erskine Ferry, towers over lock 37.
The whole atmosphere changes as the canal swings northwards and enters Clydebank. Here, the busy Dumbarton Road caused major headaches for the restorers - the road surface was only a few feet above the canal water level, junctions on either side of the crossing prevented it from being raised, diverting the canal wouldn't give any more headroom, installing a lift bridge would have caused too much disruption to traffic, and there were no locks which could conveniently be moved upstream to lower the canal. In the end the only solution was to build a droplock, the only one in Europe, which temporarily lowers the water level in a section of the canal whenever a boat needs to pass under the road. Because of safety concerns, it is manned permanently by British Waterways staff.
Across Dumbarton Road, the canal winds along behind houses, fairly unobtrusively. When the canal closed and the heavy industries it served were replaced by housing and shops, the strip of water was turned into a nice feature, like a linear park through the town. Unfortunately the water was also shallowed and the bridges replaced by culverts making it impossible to actually boat on the canal, but now that's all fixed and it successfully fulfills the functions of both a navigation channel and an ornamental centrepiece for Clydebank. Kilbowie Road marks the canal's entrance to the Clyde Shopping Centre. Like many of the canal's bridges, this one has been through four incarnations since the canal opened - an original wooden bascule bridge, an early 20th century steel swing bridge, a 1960s blockage, and the current rather stylish high level concrete bridge, opened in 2001.
Lots of shopping centres have a pond or a fountain in the middle, but not many have a working canal flowing right through them, and when you see this one, you begin to wish they did. It's perfect. Tired shoppers can sit on the benches and watch boats gliding past, while boaters can tie up and stock up on their groceries for the voyage ahead. (Although an ornamental pond would not have the disadvantage of periodically blocking the pedestrian precinct whenever a boat passes through and the bridges have to be lifted!). At the far end of the centre by Argyll Road, a huge boat on the north bank, the Debra Rose, houses the world's only "sail through" fish and chip shop!
The fish and chip boat with Argyll Road bridge being rebuilt behind her
The canal continues its journey eastwards past a park. After a new bridge at Duntreath Avenue, the first flight of locks on the canal is reached, the four Boghouse locks. The bottom one, lock 36, spent some quite considerable time buried under the ground and first saw the light of day again in 1999. At the top of the flight is a pretty little bascule bridge carrying a footpath.
Round the corner at Great Western Road was one of the canal's largest blockages. Nearly half a mile of canal was filled in, including locks 31 and 32 (there seems to be some confusion about the naming of these locks - some people say they are the lowest two in the Clobberhill flight, while others call them the Blairdardie locks. Since I don't know which is correct, I'll refrain from calling them either). Now a large new bridge takes Great Western Road over the canal, a new cut bypasses the infilled stretch, and the Clobberhill/Blairdardie locks have been patched up to allow boats through again.
Access Points
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