We went canalboating in Scotland in late fall with the gang:
- Warren & Sandy
- Kim & Karin
- Bill & Joan
- Craig & Barry
Our wide-beam narrowboat, Sanderling was rented from ABC Boat Hire, and was a tight fit for the 8 of us. Half of us were old “pros”, and half of us were newbies. The Sanderling was a big slow boat, made extra slow by the narrow and shallow Union Canal. But the weather was way better than it could have been and we had an awesome time .
The Union Canal is a very different canal from what we are used to:
- This is a contour canal. There are essentially no locks, as it weaves around the hills and valleys staying at the same elevation.
- The few locks locks are all wide enough for a wide-beam canal boat. And they are all right next to the Falkirk Wheel. You pass through them within an hour of starting this route.
- The locks are all operated by Scottish canal staff.
- The canal itself was overgrown and shallow. This reallly slowed down our big, ponderous wide-beam boat, as it occupired pretty much the whole canal in many places. There was no place for the water to go around us, and we ended up plowing “uphill” much of the time.
- There are SO MANY winding holes. We expect them to be rare, but on this canal, they are all over the place.
We got to ride the Falkirk Wheel twice and spent an extra night in Edinburgh which gave us more time for sightseeing, instead of pushing hard and visiting Glasgow.
It would have been fun to have had the chance to descend (and re-ascend) the locks to the Kelpies in our boat, but those locks were shut down for repairs. So we walked it once or twice instead.
Some links to other pages
- The Day by Day page with links to a whole bunch more photos for each day, is HERE.
- The planning page for this trip is HERE.
- And note that this trip was part of our Europe 2024 trip with Kim & Karin. That one is summarized in Europe 2024.
- Photos for us walking around the various towns, including Edinburgh, are not included in the photos below. They can be found in the Europe 2024 page.
Some Canalboating Photo Highlights
As always, it was extremely difficult to trim this back to under 100 photos.
