The Caledonian Canal is a 60-mile engineering masterpiece that connects the east and west coasts of Scotland. Opened in 1822, it was designed by the “Colossus of Roads,” Thomas Telford. Only one-third of the canal is man-made; the rest is a series of interconnected lochs, including Loch Ness, Loch Oich, and Loch Lochy. The project was conceived during the Napoleonic Wars as a way to allow British warships to avoid the treacherous Pentland Firth and French privateers in the North Sea.

The construction of the canal was also a massive social project. In the early 1800s, the Highlands were suffering from the Clearances, and thousands of people were emigrating to America. The British government funded the canal largely to provide work for 3,000 local men, hoping to stem the tide of emigration. It was an incredibly difficult task, involving the excavation of millions of tons of earth by hand and the construction of 29 locks, including the famous “Neptune’s Staircase” at Banavie.

Despite the brilliance of its design, the canal was a commercial failure for much of its early life. It took nearly 20 years to complete, by which time the Napoleonic Wars were over and steamships had become too large to fit through the original locks. It wasn’t until the Victorian era that the canal found its true calling as a tourist route. Queen Victoria herself traveled through the canal in 1873, which sparked a fashion for Highland tours that has never truly faded.

Today, the Caledonian Canal is a Scheduled Ancient Monument. It no longer carries warships, but it is a hub for “slow tourism,” with hundreds of yachts, canal boats, and hikers following the Great Glen Way alongside its banks. The Muirtown Locks in Inverness remain a vital part of the city’s geography, where you can still see the massive lock gates being opened to let sea-faring vessels transition from the Moray Firth into the sheltered waters of the Great Glen.