Two hundred years of the towpath

The Forth & Clyde Canal opened in 1790, the first waterway to cut clean across the country and join the east coast to the west. For the first time a ship could pass between the North Sea and the Atlantic without rounding the top of Scotland. Thirty-five miles of still water carried coal, grain and goods between Grangemouth and the Clyde.

At its western end the canal met the river at Bowling. That meeting point needed a harbour, and the harbour needed a customs house, a place to weigh and record everything before it travelled on.

The harbour.Bowling was a working basin, busy with puffers, schooners and steamers loading and unloading where the canal stepped down into the Clyde. Whisky, sugar, tobacco, cloth, timber, salt and tea all came through. Each arrival was logged, looked after, and sent on its way, up the railway and out across Scotland. The building that did that work is the one you stay in now.

The path.The towpath was never built for walking. It was cut for the horses that hauled the barges, one slow length at a time, from bank to bank. When the engines arrived the horses left, but the path stayed, a level, unbroken line of ground running the full coast-to-coast length of the canal.

Today it carries walkers, cyclists and runners instead of cargo, linking Bowling east towards Glasgow and on across the country. The same ground, doing a gentler job.

Quiet, then alive.The canal closed to traffic in 1963; the railway above it followed in 1964. For forty years the basin sat still. Then in 2002 the canal reopened, for narrowboats, walkers and pleasure craft, and in 2016 the viaduct beside it was conserved and brought back to life. Quieter than before. Alive again.

Today.A family took the building on, refurbished it, and has welcomed guests since 2022. Step out of the front door and the towpath is right there, east to Glasgow, west to the Clyde. Two centuries of arrivals, and the canal still running past the window. The job has not changed. Only the cargo. Now it is you.