Lockdown bridge project on the Union Canal

THE lockdown has provided one of Scotland’s canal societies with the opportunity to undertake a promotional project to raise awareness of the canal between Edinburgh and Glasgow.

The Bridge 19-40 Union Canal Society takes its name from the bridge numbers along the stretch of the Union Canal on which it operates, from Bridge 19 to Bridge 40, which runs through the towns and villages of Broxburn, Winchburgh and Philpstoun to the east of Edinburgh in West Lothian.

Although only eight miles long, this stretch of the canal includes 22 (more than one-third) of the 62 original stone bridges which were built between 1818-22 when the canal itself was under construction. Since then, three have been rebuilt: Bridge 23 at Port Buchan, Bridge 27 in Broxburn and Bridge 34 at Auldcathie, a footbridge just past Winchburgh.

The rebuilt Bridge 27 and the new Bridge 21A which carries traffic on the M8 over the canal were both constructed as part of the £78 million Millennium Link engineering project undertaken to restore navigation along the Forth & Clyde and Union Canals, reopening this once industrial highway to rejoin the waterways between Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Some 40 years after the canal opened, in the 1860s, the mining and processing of shale for oil became a boom industry in the areas around the canal in Broxburn, Winchburgh and Philpstoun. The last stretch of a new 16-mile Shale Trail walking route runs from Bridge 26 at Port Buchan, following the towpath as far as Bridge 31 near the former miners’ rows in Winchburgh.

While the industry made little use of the canal for transportation, it did require additional crossings for mineral lines carrying workers to the mines and to move around shale. The supporting piers for one such crossing are still very much in evidence around 50m east of Bridge 39. Similarly, the base of the two supporting piers on opposite sides of the canal at East Mains can be seen just west of Bridge 29.

The Bridge 19-40 route starts just after the Almond aqueduct at Lin’s Mill, the smallest of the Union Canal’s three magnificent aqueducts, carrying the canal high above the River Almond just before Bridge 19.

The canal passes through rural agricultural landscapes with views south to the Pentland Hills and north to the Forth bridges. It enters Broxburn around Bridge 25. From here are many signs of the shale industry, not least the massive bings of spent shale that rise up on either side of the canal. The last of the bings is left behind after Bridge 39, passing once more through farmland until Bridge 40 on the outskirts of Linlithgow.