Neptune's Staircase

Interesting facts

Before mechanisation the gates were worked by 36 capstans, and taking a boat through the whole flight meant 126 turns and over half a day.

Each of today's lock gates weighs about 22 tonnes, and a team of at least three lock-keepers is needed to run the staircase.

Telford's canal was partly a job-creation scheme: the government had asked him how to stem the flood of emigration from the Highlands.

The locks were enlarged during planning so that 32-gun naval frigates and ships trading with the Baltic could pass through.

Telford and his partner William Jessop chose cast-iron swing bridges over lifting bridges, fearing that bascule bridges would damage passing ships' masts.

The eight locks were finished by the end of 1811, more than a decade before the full canal opened in October 1822.

An 1837 report condemned the masonry of the Banavie locks, suggesting the contractor had hidden poor workmanship from Telford.

In 1824 one of the lock-keepers' houses on the flight was turned into an inn for steamboat passengers travelling between Glasgow and Inverness.

The resident engineer who oversaw this section was John Telford, who despite his name was no relation of the canal's designer.

Between 1995 and 2005 the canal's crumbling lock walls were stitched together with stainless-steel rods and sealed with some 25,000 tonnes of grout.

Why it is worth it

At Banavie, on the northern edge of Fort William, the Caledonian Canal begins its climb out of the sea lochs into the Great Glen with a flight of eight locks built one against the next, so that each gate serves two chambers at once. Neptune's Staircase raises boats about 20 metres, and it is the longest staircase lock in Britain. Each chamber is 180 feet long and 40 feet wide, and working a boat through the whole flight still takes around an hour and a half.

The canal was one of the great public works of Thomas Telford, built between 1803 and 1822 to give ships a route across Scotland through the chain of lochs of the Great Glen instead of the dangerous passage around the north coast. Stone for the works came from a quarry opened at Corpach Moss nearby; the lock gates were originally worked by hand. After the canal passed to the British Waterways Board in 1962 a programme of mechanisation began, and by 1969 every lock on it had been converted to hydraulic power.

What lifts Neptune's Staircase above a piece of canal engineering is its setting. The flight climbs straight up a gentle slope between grassy banks and heavy timber gates, and on a clear day the whole north-west flank of Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in Britain, rises beyond it. At the foot of the flight the railway and the road cross the canal on swing bridges; West Highland Line trains to Mallaig pass over here, and a boat waiting while the bridge swings open for it is part of the scene. From the top of the staircase the towpath continues along the canal as part of the Great Glen Way, the long-distance walk to Loch Ness, and it makes an easy stroll with the mountain at your back.

The best moment to come is when a yacht or a cruiser is working up or down the flight: water pours through the sluices, the boat rises chamber by chamber, and the crew walk alongside with their lines, the whole slow ritual unchanged in its essentials for two hundred years.

Getting there

Neptune's Staircase is at Banavie, about 3.5 km from the centre of Fort William. Banavie station, on the West Highland Line to Mallaig, is right beside the foot of the flight and served by ScotRail trains from Fort William. The nearest large airport is Glasgow (GLA), about 116 km away in a straight line; the drive or the West Highland Line train from Glasgow to Fort William runs a good deal further through the mountains.

Neptune's Staircase

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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