Caledonian Canal to Clachnaharry

Tomnahurich Swing Bridge

The canal's swing bridge, with the 1864 cemetery on its wooded hill.

You're standing on a swing bridge that carries the A82 over the Caledonian Canal, and this canal explains most of what you'll pass on the way out to the firth. Parliament authorised it in 1803, Thomas Telford engineered it, and it opened in 1822 to carry sea-going ships across Scotland. From here the water runs 60 miles to Corpach, near Fort William, though only 22 miles of it were dug by hand.

The wooded hill above the canal is Tomnahurich, hill of the yew wood. For centuries a horse race went round its foot every 24 and 25 May. Trees went in around 1753, and the cemetery on its slopes and summit opened in 1864, with a drive that climbs in terraces to the plateau on top. From up there you get the town, the Ness valley and the firth in one look.

The bridge itself went up in 1938 in place of an earlier swing bridge, and the keeper's house beside the road went up in 1813. It still swings open when a boat needs the channel.

Muirtown Locks

Four locks in one flight, stepping the canal down towards the firth.

This is where the canal starts its drop towards the sea. Four locks in one flight step boats down towards the firth, and the towpath runs beside all four chambers, so you can follow the whole drop on foot. Each chamber is 180 feet long and 40 feet wide, and the contractors Simpson and Cargill built them between 1808 and 1813. At the time they were the largest locks put up in Britain, because the canal was meant to take sea-going ships, frigates included.

The gates have been renewed more than once: oak and steel replacements went in between 1890 and 1906, and the flight was mechanised in 1963. In the spring of 2004 the chambers were emptied for repairs, and the bare stone floors lay open for months.

At the foot of the flight, the Muirtown swing bridge carries the road across the water and swings back whenever a boat needs the channel. Above the top gate the water runs level towards Loch Ness; below the bottom one it runs on into the basin, and two more locks at Clachnaharry take it the rest of the way down to the tide.

Muirtown Basin

Telford's second harbour for Inverness, now a quiet marina.

This long stretch of water is Muirtown Basin, planned by Thomas Telford as a second harbour for Inverness. The digging was nearly finished by 1807, well before the canal opened. Ships too big to work up the estuary to the town quays could load and unload here instead, and plenty did. Trade shifted to Muirtown so readily that Inverness repaired its own Citadel Quay and built a new one at Thornbush in the 1810s to win the shipping back.

The basin never held the traffic it was designed for. Iron hulls and steam engines made ships longer and deeper, and the harbour stayed quiet. Now the moorings hold yachts and cruisers tied up along its edges, and the water sits flat under the west end of the town. It's the clearest reminder on this walk that the canal was built to carry freight, and that the freight found other roads.