Stunning? Nothing to see?

Our walks in Scotland are often off more beaten tourist paths.  This was again true in Inverness ("Capitol of the Highlands") at Easter.  We do not purposefully seek out quirky locations.  We look for the overlooked, the normal, the everyday.  After all, this provides the flavor of a place.

The Muirtown Locks, or "The Cals" as they are locally known, were a planned destination.  Maybe it was an odd choice given any number of alternatives.  But it depends greatly upon one's interests...and upon  realistic expectations.  It's an eye of the beholder deal.  

An example would be the wireless museum in Kirkwall, Orkney this past Easter.  Within a block from our accommodations at The Ayre Hotel, the museum was low hanging fruit, so to speak, if we wanted to see something different.  We thought about it.  But historical radio equipment is not high on our interest list, so we opted to do other things.  No disrespect to the museum. Had we visited it, we would probably have found it quite interesting.  Just not our cup of tea (or coffee).

Doubtless, that same reasoning applies for visitors to the Muirtown Locks.  Travel opinions found online (the thumbs up/thumbs down variety) are of little help.  Online comments regarding the Muirtown Locks ran the gamut from "nothing to see" to "stunning".  "Stunning" is a bit over wrought in this instance.  So too is "nothing to see".  These are canal locks from the Age of Steam at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.  What would someone expect to see?  

For their part, most Inverness visitors are found near the castle and the numerous area pubs, which is fine.  That has its draw.  In several places, Inverness can be congested with pedestrians.  Incidentally, we too visited a couple pubs in Inverness.  We also walked up to the construction shrouded (no admittance) castle as the starting point of a walk upriver to the Ness Islands.  The walk was crowded with families and small group walkers due to sunshine breaking out.  

The upside to disinterest in the Muirtown Locks was that few people were there in an otherwise busy Inverness. "The Cals" are a flight of four locks in Muirtown at the terminus of the Caledonian Canal in northwest Inverness.  They would probably not be found on most itineraries of the many visitors to this Highland city.  That is a shame.  The locks have quite an engineering history.  

They also reflect our own contemporary problems with large scale projects--like two CalMac ferries that can't seem to get built not with any amount of money or with any measure of time.  The Caldedonian Canal was a big deal.  The largest British government project ever attempted in its day.  According to plans, it was to take 7 years and £350,000 to build.  True to form, it came back over-budget and behind-schedule...taking 17 years to complete at a cost of £840,000.  That's a pretty big miss.

And its biggest problem was that it was not up to "specs".  Work began on the Caledonian Canal in 1803 under the famous Scottish engineer Thomas Telford (1757-1834).  Teleford followed the survey route for the proposal which was laid by the even more famous Scottish mechanical (steam) engineer James Watt 30 years earlier.  James Watt ushered in the Age of Steam in 1765 and eventually industrialism.     

Muirtown is a basin on Beauly/Morray Firth.  The government sought to develop the basin as a second harbor for Inverness through which freight would be transported via the Caledonian Canal, an inland water route running 60 miles via canal works and 29 locks and through several natural lakes in the Great Glen of Scotland; the most famous being Loch Ness.  The canal would link Scotland's east coast (Inverness) to its west coast (Fort William).

The design originated in the Age of Sail.  But that age was soon to be obsolete.  The Age of Steam had already begun, and industrialization was fast approaching.  The raison d'être for the canal was to cut shipping times and increase safety by avoiding sailing the oft treacherous Pentland Firth on Scotland's north coast.  

The canal project claimed a social benefit as well...it would provide local Scotsmen jobs (an ageless recycled political claim still circulating as we speak).  With jobs, that would stem the flow of migration out of the Highlands.  That alleged benevolence must be taken with a huge grain of salt--on the order of a ton of it--given the ongoing Highland Clearances (Fuadach nan Gaidheal) are documented into the 1890s (late Victorian Era).  And in truth, the Clearances only stopped with the advent of the First World War.

Another reason for the project, though not expressly stated, was that the inland canal put British shipping out of the reach of French canons--the Napoleonic Wars were in full swing at this time.  War lent a certain urgency to it.  But wars don't last forever, even though they seem to nowadays.  The canal opened in 1822. 

The canal had problems when it first opened; chief among which was its depth--14 feet versus the planned 20 feet.  Just about the time the canal was finally completed, ship sizes began to increase to improve shipping profitability.  The canal did not have sufficient draft.   Muirtown Basin and the Caledonian Canal could not handle larger ship sizes, and the canal was euphemistically less than successful.  Eventually, in 1844-1847 another construction phase took place and the canal finally met its original design...too little too late.   

Limitation on canal transits are not unfamiliar today.  Modern ships routinely exceed Panama or Suez canals restrictions.  They must either sail around the Capes (e.g. with a Capesize class) or must remain in a specific trade geography with capable ports (e.g. Qatar Max, China Max, Very Large Crude Carriers, etc.)

The Caldeonian Canal missed the boat, to turn the pun.  By the time the canal was finished, steamships had advanced enough to ply the Pentland Firth better than previous sailing ships.  In any case, the "full potential" of the Caledonian Canal was never realized.  Today, Muirtown is a marina, and it seemed more or less full of pleasure craft.  The Caledonian Canal is now almost exclusively used by recreational craft.  We saw no boats of any kind in the canal.

As for Thomas Telford, upon completion of the Caledonian Canal, Parliament passed the "Church of Scotland Act" in 1823 [4 Geo. 4, c. 79], which granted £50,000 to build 32 churches in Highland and Island communities that lacked church buildings and/or to build them in communities with pockets of Catholic or minor denominations.  These were considered "undesirable" by the Church of Scotland.  In any case, these community churches became known as "Telford Parliamentary Kirks". 

Some "Telfords" are still in active use, for example at Portnahaven, Isle of Islay, which we visited in 2017.  Others have been repurposed as art studios, hostels, private homes, and so forth.  Some have been demolished and built over.  

Modern Americans raised on the mantra of "separation of church and state" would probably consider the Telford Kirks an anathema--edifices of a government established religion (which happens to be Presbyterian).  Yet, that retroactively applies modern values (ex post facto if one were to use fancy Latin or constitutional law) to an age already 200 years past.  Back then, not having a house of worship was considered an infringement upon human religious rights.  

The 1823 Act for Building Additional Places of Worship in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (i.e. the Telford Churches) would not be repealed for 150 years; not until the 1973 Statute Law (Repeals) Act which cleared out old Parliamentary statues that "are no longer of practical utility".

Stunning or not, nothing to see or not, the times they are constantly a'changing.  The Caldedonian Canal speaks that truth.  The visit to hear it was well-spent.