Water play

Anxious to get out and walk somewhere on the moors, l found myself today for nearly 11 miles in the company of a water aqueduct, the brainchild of water engineer Robert Thom. It was beautiful and brilliant at the same time, a kind of model of good design.

The day was bright from the beginning. One way up to the wide-open and windy spaces looking down on the Clyde was a path next to Kelly Burn, a busy stream with waterfalls and chains of pools in a glen choked with moss-covered beech trees. (They do things with beeches on Scotland that are amazing.)

Out finally from the claustrophobic Withywindle-ish (of Hobbit fame) valley, and marching up a farm track, the sea and islands behind me, the treeless bracken-covered hills on front, I came across Kelly Cut, an aqueduct (unused now), actually a lined ditch filled with stagnant water, fenced off to keep the ubiquitous sheep from tumbling in.

The beauty (and convenience) was that it followed a single contour (or almost) along the valley side so as to carry water from Kelly reservoir north to Loch Thom, created in the early nineteenth century to clean water for drinking (Thom pioneered sand-filtration) and power for industrial machinery, functions it performed reliably for years and years.

Walking the aqueduct, the Kelly Cut or, after Cornalee, the Greenock Cut, means walking out and in where the hillside shoulders out or folds in, while below the slope falls away revealing sunlit vistas below and beyond.

Once begun, the journey on the Greenock Cut, almost right around Dunrod Hill  to the backside of Loch Thom, about 6 miles, can't be left;  it's forward or back, but never off. Other walkers were so infrequent l was able to sometimes feel like a little sky warden god patrolling the heavens above sea and city.

In contrast to my grandiose fantasies were the fine stone-work of the water channel, the arched bridges over it, the buildings, the sluices, three cunning little water level governor, all your handiwork, Mr Thom.

When the cut opened, the city fathers in special boats went around the hillside, in and out, like an amusement park ride, yet not play.

I love to walk to the sound of running water, and this accompanied me all afternoon. Even abandoned and until recently ignored, your project continues to please, the sinuosity of the aqueduct mimicking the water in it, the majestic height alluding to the power of wheel-turning waterfalls which, place to place, gushed from it. Walking your work, Mr Thom, was a joy for me as it seemed to be for the water. Many thanks.