Glenfinnan

Not long after first light we loosened our moorings at Craignure on the Isle of Mull to make for the sea lock at Corpach, Atlantic entry to the Caledonian Canal. By now, tide tables have to be consulted and appointments made with lock-keepers and we had a strong, adverse wind to contend with. It made for a dramatic entry into the canal with all hands on deck and much moving of fenders. By the end of the morning our Captain, by common consent, had more than earned his day’s wages, for after the sea lock at Corpach comes celebrated Neptune’s Staircase, a flight of eight locks that raised the ship 64 feet in the space of 500 yards. We arrived at the top of Neptune’s Staircase in time for lunch, having had a short talk on the Scottish engineer Thomas Telford. He had won the government contact to construct the canal in the beginning of the nineteenth century during the time of the French Wars, when issues of national security suggested that a means of transferring the naval fleet rapidly from the Atlantic to the North Sea would be advantageous. His reputation had been sealed when working on the Shropshire Union Canal where his dramatic aqueduct carried the new canal high over the River Dee. He would later build the world’s first suspension bridge over the Menai Straits, another government project on the road linking London to Dublin via Holyhead.

In the afternoon, we took a short coach ride to Glenfinnan where Bonnie Prince Charlie raised his standard at the start of the ’45 Jacobite Rebellion. Today there is a dramatic monument, leaning slightly Pisa-like into the wind, but the main objective of our visit was to view the unsurpassable scenery of Glen Shiel. Westward the loch beckons seaward, to the east it is traversed by another remarkable feat of engineering, the Glenfinnan railway viaduct, built for the West Highland Railway to link Fort William with Mallaig (and hence the Isle of Skye at Armadale). The monument was recently made famous in the first Harry Potter film, used as the location to film all of the Hogwarts Express sequences. We watched the steam train – The Jabobite, needless to say – cross the viaduct from a viewing point then took a nature walk to view a magnificent remnant of the old Caledonian forest, with remarkable examples of the beautiful native Scots pine clinging to the rocky hillside and groves of silver birch and alder beside the loch. Color was provided in the watery afternoon sunshine by bright orange rowan berries, purple heather and creamy wisps of meadowsweet.