Motherwell to Linlithgow Great British Railway Journeys


Motherwell to Linlithgow

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For Victorian Britons, George Bradshaw was a household name.

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At a time when railways were new,

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Bradshaw's guidebook inspired them to take to the tracks.

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I am using a Bradshaw's Guide to understand how trains transformed

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Britain, its landscape, its industry, society and leisure time.

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As I crisscross the country, 150 years later, it helps me

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to discover the Britain of today.

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Steered by my Bradshaw's guide,

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I am continuing my journey across Southern Scotland.

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With the coming of the Industrial Revolution,

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the famed natural beauty of the River Clyde had to accommodate ship

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building yards that would supply vessels to the world.

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Down came the trees and up went the dockyard cranes

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and factory chimney stacks.

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My route this week has carried me across Scotland from West to East.

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It began at the Firth of Clyde

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and headed through the Scottish Lowlands to Glasgow.

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I'll turn North to Stirling and Perth, skirting the Highlands.

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I'll then moved east to Fife

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and the famous university town of St Andrews from where I'll travel

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to Scotland's capital where my journey ends.

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On today's leg,

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I begin in Motherwell in the heart of the Scottish Lowlands,

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before heading south to the edge of the Clyde coalfields.

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Then it is back to one of Scotland's most populated areas,

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and my journey ends at Linlithgow, birthplace of Mary Queen of Scots.

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I meet the kings of molten metal...

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My goodness, that is an extraordinary sight,

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absolutely vast, isn't it? What a scale this is built on.

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..rediscover the Victorian love affair with Scotland...

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Everybody came to the Falls of Clyde specifically to see Corra Linn,

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the largest waterfall,

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and the largest waterfall in Britain as well.

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..and visit the home of a mighty brew.

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It's still a family secret, I had it passed down to me by my father

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and I have now passed it through to my daughter.

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George Bradshaw believed that tourists should see factories,

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the Dundyvan ironworks are well worth visiting.

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I'm going to get off at Motherwell to understand how the vast

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demands of the ship building industry were met

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during the 19th century.

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Motherwell at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution

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was a small farming community of about 700 people.

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The town's fortunes were transformed by the arrival of the railway

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and by 1901 its population had swelled to 30,000.

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Central to the town's industrial boom was David Colville's iron

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and steel works, founded in 1871.

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I am meeting Colin Timmins, manager at Tata Steel,

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heir to that legacy.

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I really don't need to ask you

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whether railways play a part in your business, they clearly do.

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What do you use them for?

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They are mainly used for the raw materials coming in

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from Scunthorpe of steel. We bring 1,200 tonnes in at one time.

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When was this set up, this plant?

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1871, the plant was built.

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Basically, an integrated steelworks

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and basically, we've supplied steel to a lot of the

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famous railway bridges.

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If you look at the Tay Bridge disaster

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that we had in the last century, this plant provided modern

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good-quality steel for the rebuilding of that bridge.

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If you look at the Forth Rail Bridge, we provided iron for this

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bridge also, which is quite unbelievable that the structure

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still stands today,

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and to me is one of the wonders of the world.

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The Forth Rail Bridge required a staggering 58,000 tonnes of steel.

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The structure demonstrated the advantage of malleable steel

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over brittle cast iron.

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And so, really, unbelievable quantities of steel

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have gone into these works.

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Oh, more than a million tonnes into the North Sea alone.

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And when you start to look at shipping, bridge building,

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trains themselves, you have no idea of the quantities we are producing.

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Over 130, 140 years of history. Quite unbelievable.

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The company's first steel plant was the Dalzell steel

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and iron works with 20 puddling furnaces employing 200 men.

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Under the energetic direction of Mr Colville, it soon gained a

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reputation for quality

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and Motherwell gained its nickname of Steel-opolis.

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Today, the Dalzell plate mill is one of only two

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remaining in Motherwell.

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What we have here is we have got 16 small furnaces and one very,

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-very large furnace.

-Absolutely vast, isn't it?

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What a scale this was built on.

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The factory's rolling mill turns out up to 10,000 tonnes

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of plate steel in a week.

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Its customers come from construction, shipbuilding

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and offshore engineering.

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What am I going to see here, Colin?

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What you're going to see, Michael, is a slab which has been unloaded,

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treated and it's then going to come out of the socking patch,

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it could be anything from three tonnes.

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In fact we have got the capability to roll slabs up to 30 tons.

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As you can see now, the operator is taking the lid off the furnace,

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and the crane is going to go in and lift the slab.

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The temperature inside the furnace is almost 1,000 Celsius.

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As you can see, Michael, you can see the slab on the crane just now.

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Roughly, the slab weighs 12 to 13 tonnes.

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Those immense pinchers have gone in there.

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It is a set of pinchers, we call them tongs,

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which will lift the slab very carefully out of the furnace.

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Oh, my goodness, that is an extraordinary sight.

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What the crane will do is take the slab down onto the roller table.

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Quite an alarming feeling to have a piece of molten steel rushing

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-towards you like that.

-Absolutely, it is very, very warm.

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-Feel the heat of that.

-Fantastic.

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The slab is entering the descaling process.

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This is where any impurities in the metal are removed

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before the steel is rolled.

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-As you see, the surface of the slab is now clean.

-Yes.

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So you minimise any risk of rolling in some dirt in the mill.

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It is a great feat of German engineering which was

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put in during the '70s and modernised many times.

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As you can see, it will go through here, we will do a number of passes

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through the mill itself and that will go from slab form to plate form.

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Those plates can be how thick?

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The plates can be anything from 12 millimetres thick

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up to about 200 millimetres.

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And so you're putting it in again and again

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and flattening it out bit by bit, down to the right thickness?

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Yes. We will put it through the mill 15, 16, 17 times

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to get to the gauge that we require.

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I can understand why educated tourists in the 19th century

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would gasp in awe visiting a plant like this.

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I feel the continuity of history in a facility that manufactured

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steel for the Titanic and the Lusitania

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and still supply steel plate for British warships today.

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I never saw anything on such a scale.

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The crashes and bangs, the heat, the steam, the whole thing

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is deeply impressive.

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As I make tracks south, I am reminded that Scotland has long been

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a land of contrasts, of heavy industry,

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and picturesque countryside and it was this magnificence

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of nature in the raw that literally made Victorian ladies swoon.

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My next stop will be Lanark.

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Bradshaw's tells me that travellers can visit the Falls of Clyde

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and the romantic scenery in the neighbourhood.

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Independent of the magnificent waterfalls, the beauty of the

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country, and the picturesque views are a source of great attraction.

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As even in rural Lanarkshire,

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cotton mills began to spring up on the river banks.

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Aesthetes yearned for preindustrial simplicity.

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During the 18th century,

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the grand European tour was a normal part of the education of young

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aristocrats, but when the continent was put beyond bounds

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during the Napoleonic Wars, Scotland became the fashionable destination.

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The route between Edinburgh

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and Lanark became popular with landscape lovers.

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I am meeting local guide, Alison Galbraith.

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Alison, Bradshaw's is ecstatic.

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Corra Lin fall, 84 feet, considered by some to be

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the finest of the falls.

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"To describe the beauties of the scene is an almost impossible task,

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"requiring the glowing language of a poet to do justice to them,"

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and I think actually more than one poet came here in 1802.

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Yes, Wordsworth and Coleridge, and Wordsworth's sister Dorothy as well.

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They were doing their petite tour,

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they had come from the Lake District

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and were making their way around the beauty spots, everybody came

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to the Falls of Clyde to see Corra Linn,

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the largest waterfall in Britain.

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Would this have been an arduous journey in those days?

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I can't imagine it would have been easy,

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because this was just before the trains that Dorothy and William

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and Coleridge came, so they were definitely with a horse and trap.

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Dorothy doesn't complain that it is arduous,

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but they certainly got out and walked alongside their horse quite a lot.

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Their trip in 1802 took six weeks and covered 663 miles.

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It was a kind of literary pilgrimage for romantics.

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I mean, you are in a lovely 19th-century costume here

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and I imagine that actually your long skirt dragging in the mud,

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-this would all have been quite inconvenient.

-Definitely.

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I think the Victorian ladies must have had some metal

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and spirit to do what they did.

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Just having to hitch your skirts up to walk up the inclines is

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exciting enough as it is, but a lot of the paths had 30 to 40 steps

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chiselled down the gorge to the falls,

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so they must have been very game.

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Dorothy made notes on some of the journey's more challenging

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aspects, describing the road quality as "most excellent" or "roughish",

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or wretchedly bad.

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But such hardship did not discourage this romantic trio.

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Wordsworth wrote "Lord of the vale, astounding flood,

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"the dullest leaf in this thick wood quakes conscious of thy power.

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"The caves reply with hollow moan."

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Clearly very impressed by the majesty of the place.

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Yes, certainly when Dorothy and William where here, the full

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force of the water would have come over and it really is quite a sight.

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But the falls were tamed in 1926 by Britain's first hydroelectric

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power station.

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Situated between Corra Linn and Dundaff Linn,

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this plant can generate up to 11 megawatts of power.

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January and November, the force of the water would resemble what

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Wordsworth and Coleridge were seeing back then.

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J.M.W. Turner painted a classical scene of naked bathing beauties

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here in 1802.

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Just over 50 years later,

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it was the Caledonian Railway that provoked controversy.

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There's an interesting piece in one of the papers of the day that

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describes how the gentleman on the other side of the falls,

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Lord Cranston, complains about the cheap train tickets attracting

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day visitors who are no longer welcome on his estate.

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But Lady Mary Ross was from Bonnington House on this side

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of the river, now the wildlife reserve.

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She was instrumental in maintaining paths

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and she actively encouraged the tourists to come.

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They were also treated in the pavilion, to have cups of tea

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and as they went in there, the mirrors on the ceiling reflected

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the falls, so apparently ladies would swoon

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and faint with the awesome view - it wouldn't be awesome back then,

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though, would it? The majestic,

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sublime view of water cascading down upon their heads.

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In this television age, you don't see tourists swooning,

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but they still travel to marvel at the falls.

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Dorothy Wordsworth's recollections of a tour made in Scotland

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remains a classic of picturesque travel writing.

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The next stop on my journey is just downstream.

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Bradshaw's tells me that no stranger ought to omit visiting

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the far famed village of New Lanark.

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It was established in 1784 by Robert Owen's father-in-law.

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Robert Owen then acquired the village.

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He was a philanthropist on his way to becoming a socialist.

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For example, he would buy goods in bulk which could be sold

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in the village shops to the workers at little more than cost price,

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and that idea was the origin of the co-operative movement.

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Within this beautifully restored 18th-century cotton mill,

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which is part of the New Lanark World Heritage Site,

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I'll find my bed for the night.

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Excited by the prospect of a new day,

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I've headed back to Lanark Station to take the train via Motherwell.

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At my next destination, the railway station opened in 1848

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and closed the following year because the village was too small.

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You wouldn't say that any more about Cumbernauld.

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Since I visited the steelworks at Motherwell, I have been

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wondering what the workers drank to keep up their energy levels.

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What brew was appropriate for those men of iron?

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These days, Cumbernauld Station serves one of the most

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populated areas of Scotland.

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Since 2007, it has been home to one of Scotland's bestselling

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soft drinks, born at the peak of the country's industrial boom.

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I'm hitching a lift to Cumbernauld's Irn-Bru factory with

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delivery driver John Spence, working my passage.

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-Hello, John.

-Hello, sir, how are you doing?

-Good to see you.

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You've been doing this a while, haven't you?

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-Yeah, I've been doing it for 50 year.

-50 years?!

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So what do you need if you're going to last in a job?

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A sense of fun. Over and above that you need a good hand,

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people that help you, like your van mate. I've been very lucky.

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I've had some quite good van mates over the years.

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Do you think I'll be up to the job?

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Oh, yes, I'm positive you'll be up to the job.

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You'll maybe even last 50 years the same as what I've done!

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'I've always thought that whisky was Scotland's national drink

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'but this concoction also lays claim to carry the saltire.'

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-Here we go, Michael.

-Whoa, look at all that!

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'In 1767, Englishman Joseph Priestley suspended a bowl

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'of distilled water above a beer vat

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'and discovered how to make carbonated water.

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'The water had a pleasant taste

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'and spawned an industry in fizzy drinks.'

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Ah, you're doing great.

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So would you like to take some stuff into the shop for us?

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Oh, yes, please.

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Right. Down.

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Bring it in. Hold it.

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-And then tilt it back.

-Whoa!

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'This beverage owes its origin to the Barr family,

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'who opened their first soft drink factory in Falkirk in 1875.'

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And if you'd like to put them up on the shelves.

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-Ah, you're doing a grand job, Michael.

-Ah, thank you!

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Don't smash any of them!

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THEY LAUGH

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You need real bottle to do this job.

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'And just as in Bradshaw's day, the bottles are recycled.'

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Well, here we go, Michael, we'll get the empties on the lorry.

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Oops!

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-One down.

-Health and safety.

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I've had nothing to do at this delivery.

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The destination for our empty bottles is

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the state-of-the-art factory at Cumbernauld which,

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since it opened, has produced almost 200 million litres of soft drinks.

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Despite its scale, this is still a family firm

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and Robin Barr is showing me where my empties will go.

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Well, this is the return of a bottle line here which is, I think,

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the only returnable bottle line left in the UK.

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-The customer gets money back if he brings a bottle back?

-Yes, they do.

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This was the only pack in 1875

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and it was the only pack that soft drinks were sold in

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right up to the 1960s.

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'When the Barr family opened its first soft drinks factory

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'it was one of hundreds of Scottish manufacturers, selling to men

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'and women doing tough physical work in the crowded industrial towns.'

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What was the appeal of the product in those days?

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It had a lot of appeals, it was obviously a nice refreshment,

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as it is today.

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Partly, it gave a lot of energy because of the sugar content.

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And the quantity of energy was quite important,

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but also there was a slight safety factor,

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that most soft drinks manufacturers were based on a site where there was

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a well, and the quality of the water was therefore guaranteed to be pure.

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'To make the most of this natural ingredient,

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'the manufacturers took full advantage of everything

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'that 19th-century technology had to offer.'

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-Do you make use of the railways?

-We did in 1875.

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But most, if not all, of our main supplies

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came from the south of England, from London.

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It was a firm, Reilly, who made machinery,

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there was a firm, Stephenson and Howe who made essences,

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from whom we still buy essences today and all these supplies

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in 1875 would have come up on the railway line to Falkirk.

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'In the early years, the Barr family produced all sorts of drinks,

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'from lemonade to ginger beer.

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'But one particular brand sealed their fortune.'

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Your most famous product, when was that developed?

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That was in Victorian times, and was introduced to a recipe

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that my great-grandfather

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and my great uncle put together themselves.

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-Do you know that recipe?

-Yes, I do, it's still a family secret.

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I had it passed it down to me by my father

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and I've now passed it through to my daughter,

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so that there will be a continuation even when I'm gone.

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The magic formula soon became a hit.

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Thanks in part to innovative marketing featuring

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the nation's most famous athletes.

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The name... Is it connected with the steam industry?

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I suppose it is, in the sense that clearly people made

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an association with the heavy industries in Scotland at that time,

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the iron and steel and shipbuilding industries.

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-Does it have any iron in it?

-Oh, yes, it does.

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Ammonium ferric citrate is one of the ingredients.

0:21:430:21:47

And what does that do for you?

0:21:470:21:49

I don't know, if I say it puts hairs on your chest

0:21:490:21:53

I won't sell much Irn-Bru to the ladies!

0:21:530:21:55

MICHAEL LAUGHS

0:21:550:21:57

Back on board,

0:22:020:22:03

I'm eastward bound for West Lothian's county town.

0:22:030:22:07

I'm on my way to Linlithgow.

0:22:180:22:19

Bradshaw says, "This county does not possess that romantic scenery

0:22:190:22:24

"for which the Scottish mountains are celebrated.

0:22:240:22:27

"But the estates are laid out in the very best of taste.

0:22:270:22:32

"In every quarter, the Forth River assumes a singular variety

0:22:320:22:36

"of aspects - hills, promontories, winding bays, lofty shores."

0:22:360:22:42

The Scottish rivers are highly attractive

0:22:420:22:44

but not very suitable for shipping.

0:22:440:22:47

That was a problem until the canals came along.

0:22:470:22:50

'Linlithgow is the birthplace of Mary Queen of Scots.

0:22:530:22:57

'And its palace was home to the Stewart kings.

0:22:570:23:00

'I'm interested in its more recent past and I'm meeting Mike Smith,

0:23:000:23:04

'who is chairman of the Linlithgow Union Canal Society.'

0:23:040:23:08

-Permission to board.

-Please do.

0:23:080:23:10

'The Union Canal was built to provide a direct inland connection

0:23:100:23:15

'between Glasgow and Edinburgh, as well as between the coasts.

0:23:150:23:19

'It was constructed in 1818

0:23:190:23:21

'at a cost of almost half a million pounds.'

0:23:210:23:24

Mike, what was the impact of the canals on Scotland?

0:23:270:23:29

In its local areas where they were, quite astonishing, this was

0:23:310:23:35

the sudden access of a motorway between the major cities of Scotland,

0:23:350:23:40

this canal. And of course, the Forth and Clyde Canal,

0:23:400:23:42

between the two great estuaries, made a tremendous difference,

0:23:420:23:46

particularly to the fishing fleets,

0:23:460:23:47

because they could follow the fish either side of the country,

0:23:470:23:50

by going through the Forth and Clyde as a ship canal.

0:23:500:23:52

-What were the cargoes?

-Mostly coal. Ironstone.

0:23:520:23:57

And what they called freestone, which is a stone

0:23:570:23:59

that's easily made into buildings.

0:23:590:24:02

A huge appetite for that in Edinburgh.

0:24:020:24:05

And the Slamannan Railway,

0:24:050:24:06

which terminated at a basin on this canal, which

0:24:060:24:09

was a joint venture between the canal company and the railway company,

0:24:090:24:13

used to bring these materials up from the North Lanarkshire

0:24:130:24:17

coal fields and put them on the boats and take them into Edinburgh

0:24:170:24:21

lock-free. It was well worth investing in that railway

0:24:210:24:25

because it halved the journey distance

0:24:250:24:28

and knocked 75% off the time involved.

0:24:280:24:31

'The resourcefulness and imagination of the men who designed

0:24:320:24:36

'the canals never fails to amaze me.

0:24:360:24:38

'The engineers Hugh Baird and his mentor Thomas Telford came up with

0:24:380:24:43

'impressive navigation solutions.

0:24:430:24:45

'64 stone bridges and three major aqueducts enable a continuous

0:24:450:24:50

'ribbon of water to run through the land.'

0:24:500:24:52

This canal was lock-free all the way to the end at Falkirk

0:24:540:24:58

and there was a single flight of 11 locks down to join the Forth

0:24:580:25:03

and Clyde, but the whole idea of gathering them there was

0:25:030:25:06

that the rest of the canal should be rapid transport.

0:25:060:25:09

'With a 35 metre difference in height, it required 3,500 tonnes

0:25:090:25:13

'of water per run and took most of the day to pass through the flight.'

0:25:130:25:18

I suppose the locks were the thing that slowed down the freight.

0:25:180:25:22

Absolutely, and that is why this was built as a contour canal.

0:25:220:25:25

-What was the locomotion?

-On the canal? This canal? Horses.

0:25:250:25:29

Exclusively horses.

0:25:290:25:30

It didn't survive commercially long enough to get mechanised.

0:25:300:25:34

'With growing competition from the railways, the canal declined

0:25:340:25:38

'and was eventually closed.

0:25:380:25:40

'But thanks to the Millennium Link project,

0:25:400:25:43

'in 2001 the canal was triumphantly reopened

0:25:430:25:48

'and Mike wants me to see a marvel of the 21st century.'

0:25:480:25:52

Well, here we are at the top of the Falkirk Wheel.

0:25:570:26:00

I've never seen a structure like that.

0:26:000:26:03

It looks as though we're just going to go off the end.

0:26:030:26:05

It does, doesn't it? But I hope we're not!

0:26:050:26:08

So, in one go, we are going to do the equivalent of 11 locks.

0:26:090:26:12

Effectively, yes.

0:26:120:26:15

We are an amazing height.

0:26:150:26:17

Any idea how far we go down?

0:26:170:26:19

-It's just short of 100 feet.

-Just short of 100 feet. Wow.

0:26:190:26:23

Each case in the big tub that we are sitting in,

0:26:230:26:26

each is identical in size and when they're full of water,

0:26:260:26:29

they are identical in weight. So the thing is perfectly balanced.

0:26:290:26:32

So, in principle, you could just give it a little shove

0:26:320:26:35

and it would slowly rotate under momentum.

0:26:350:26:38

'It works according to the Archimedes' principle of displacement.

0:26:380:26:43

'The boat will displace its own weight of water in the tub

0:26:430:26:46

'so that the weight of boat plus water in the rising tub is

0:26:460:26:50

'balanced by the one descending.

0:26:500:26:52

'Now that's what I call clever.'

0:26:520:26:55

'And it's also, to my mind, extremely beautiful.'

0:26:550:26:59

Mike, I think that is the weirdest feeling.

0:26:590:27:02

We have a very gradually sunk down but actually watching

0:27:020:27:06

the other case rise, that is going past us quite fast, isn't it?

0:27:060:27:09

Yes. It's odd, how points of view differ.

0:27:090:27:14

-A massive piece of machinery.

-Huge, isn't it?

0:27:150:27:18

William Wordsworth might lament the railway age, which brought

0:27:290:27:32

hordes of tourists to beauty spots like the Falls of Clyde,

0:27:320:27:37

but in truth, there had been a transport revolution

0:27:370:27:40

before the Victorians,

0:27:400:27:42

when a brilliant generation of engineers built the canals.

0:27:420:27:47

A young cartographer who was in awe of their achievements

0:27:470:27:51

began his career by mapping them.

0:27:510:27:54

His name was George Bradshaw.

0:27:540:27:57

Next time, I visit the scene of a bloody battle...

0:28:010:28:04

And eventually the English are forced back to a position where

0:28:040:28:08

they are in complete chaos.

0:28:080:28:10

'..enjoy a lesson in the skills of an ancient craft...'

0:28:100:28:13

-It doesn't sound like it sounded with you.

-You need more porridge.

0:28:130:28:17

More porridge!

0:28:170:28:19

'..and soothe my traveller's taste buds.'

0:28:190:28:22

Mm, I'm slipping into ecstasy.

0:28:240:28:28

Very, very fruity. Lovely.

0:28:280:28:30

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