News
Click here for a list of updates made to this website. Check below for news of the canals themselves, mostly reports on how the restoration work is going.
!! Major News - Forth and Clyde Canal Reopens !!
Click here to read about the reopening celebrations, and view a video clip of a giant fish cutting a ribbon to reopen lock 31!
29/3/2001 - Wester Hailes update
You have to feel sorry for the people of Wester Hailes. It seems like there is always some redevelopment scheme disrupting their daily lives, whether it's demolishing 1960s tower blocks and replacing them with nice houses, upgrading the concrete shoe box of a shopping centre into a multi-screen cinema or replacing a major roundabout with traffic lights. And now, to top it all, this crack pot scheme to put a canal through their housing estate!
For those of you who don't know, a mile long stretch of the Union Canal on the west of Edinburgh was destroyed when the Wester Hailes estate was built, the bridges replaced by embankments, the water piped and the channel filled in. As restoration of the canal began, this section became the biggest obstacle to reopening the whole waterway. But 18 months ago, work finally started to recreate the missing mile, a mammoth task. Today I visited the site to see how work was progressing.
First I visited Kingsknowe Road, which, although not actually part of the infill, was close enough to be lumped into the same Millennium Link contract and is being restored at the same time. The road had been diverted across a temporary embankment on the west side of the blockage while the old culvert was removed and a new bridge is being built to replace it. Progress here didn't look so advanced as in Wester Hailes itself, but Kingsknowe is just a straighforward bridge replacement and so there won't be so much to do here.
A few hundred yards from Kingsknowe Road is Dumbryden Road, which is where the mile long infilled section begins properly. The new Dumbryden Road bridge looks nearly complete. The photo below shows the view over the top of the bridge on the left with the old road on the right. Unusually for a canal bridge restoration, the new road is actually lower than the old one!
The original stone arched Dumbryden Road Bridge was buried inside the road embankment when the canal was filled in and has now been uncovered. I'm not sure whether it will survive to span the new canal or whether it is awaiting demolition when the new bridge is finished. Anyway, here it is:
New bridges 6, 6A and 6B (respectively carrying Hailesland Park, Walkers Wynd and Clovenstone Road) are now open to road traffic and the route of the canal as it snakes its way under them can easily be worked out although there's still lots to do before boats are sailing through. I can't quite see what route the canal will take on its way to bridge 6C (Murrayburn Road) - there appear to be a number of buildings in the way, at least one of which will have to be demolished to make room.
From bridge 6C (which is complete and open to road traffic), the canal channel has been lined and is partially filled (although I think the rain had more to do with this than any desire by the contractors to put water in as soon as possible!) The photo below shows the view looking west from bridge 6C. The bridge in the distance is bridge 7, Wester Hailes Road.
From bridge 7 onwards, the new canal is finished, including bridges and the towpath, and has been refilled and reconnected to the original canal on the other side of the infill. This photo shows the new canal from bridge 7.
For more details of the work in Wester Hailes, go to the Wester Hailes page.
The older pictures of work in progress have been removed from this page to speed up download times. They can be found on these pages, arranged by location:
(Click here for more information about the Millennium Link project in general).
to the main canal page