Under the Chair of Grahame Fraser and his wife Helen, Northern Ireland's branch annual study tour visited Glasgow and Edinburgh to see a range of urban regeneration and transportation projects. The 27 strong party gathered on Wednesday morning 16 May 2001 at the Stena passenger terminal in Belfast to board the 7.40 HSS sailing to Stranraer. We travelled by luxury Ulsterbus coach from Stranraer to Glasgow for lunch and a presentation on the Glasgow Urban Realm Strategy by Ferguson and McIlveen, and an intresting but light hearted presentation on roads and transport in Glasgow by Scott Wilson Kirkpatrick. This was followed by guided tours of the Urban Realm project sites in the centre of Glasgow. The party reassembled at the end of the afternoon to travel to our hotel in the centre of Edinburgh and later that evening we enjoyed an excellent meal in a restaurant on the Royal Mile.

Thursday morning commenced with a presentation in our hotel on the Millennium Link Canal Project by representatives of the British Waterways Board. This is a major Millennium Project which will restore the Forth and Clyde and Union Canals to their former glory, joining the West and East Coast of Scotland with fully navigable waterways for the first time in over 35 years. The Forth and Clyde Canal was first excavated in the 1760s and its reinstatement is expected to promote more than forty thousand full time jobs.

The cost of linking Scotland’s North Sea and Atlantic Coasts, as well as reconnecting the once busy water borne routes between Glasgow and Edinburgh is £78.5m. Funding is from the Millennium Commission, Scottish Enterprise and the European Union, local authorities and project manager British Waterways. The cost of the scheme is not justified purely in terms of reopening navigation for leisure craft but the wider impact of creating jobs and enabling canal side commercial and recreational development along the new corridor.

The canal will also provide “Grey Water” for Industrial use in Grangemouth, while in conjunction with British Telecom, a fibre optic cable runs alongside the canal between Glasgow and Edinburgh. The tour visited the Forth and Clyde Canal at Grangemouth to see the construction of a new seal lock and a section of new canal. This contract included considerable river works as well as the building of a Marina alongside the new sea lock making it possible for boats to move from Grangemouth Docks along the River Carron on to the new canal.

After lunch in Falkirk, the tour visited the Falkirk Wheel, the unique rotating boat lift which will connect the Union Canal to the Forth and Clyde Canal. The giant concrete piers of the superstructure dominate the view of the wheel site, where construction is moving quickly ahead with work on schedule for completion by the end of the year. The wheel itself with its two gondolas are being constructed by Buttery Engineering Works in Derbyshire and twelve hundred tonnes of steel will have to travel by road from Ripley to Falkirk under police escort. The site also incorporates an impressive £3.7m visitor centre which will have an exhibition area, a one hundred seat café and a shop.

The tour party was fully kitted out with safety hats and reflective jackets, and as well as visiting the wheel site, we were able to walk through the canal tunnel under the Antonine Wall, which is adjacent to the wheel site. There are two web cams on the site and if you are interested you can check progress at:
www.scottishcanals.co.uk
www.millenniumlink.org.uk

Dinner on Thursday evening was in the New Town area of Edinburgh and the party was augmented by a considerable ex-patriot contingent of Ulster students who joined their parents for a most enjoyable evening. On Friday the tour visited the Port of Leith for a presentation by Forth Ports on the major regeneration of Leith waterfront which is being carried out as a joint venture between the private sector and Forth Ports.

The prestige centrepiece of this development is the Ocean Terminal Shopping Centre. Edinburgh's new 440,000 square feet shopping centre has magnificent views from its stunning location on Ocean Drive, yet the shopping centre is only ten minutes from Princes Street. The new centre will include a Debenhams store, a mall of retail shops, extensive restaurants, a multi-screen cinema, a 1600 space car park and a visitor centre for the Royal Yacht Britannia. The party had a most enjoyable tour of this development which will be a wonderful addition to the Leith Docks area. Other major projects include leisure, residential and office developments, including the recently completed Scottish Executive Building which houses 1500 Scottish Civil Servants. The party then enjoyed a tour of the Royal Yacht Britannia which has been fitted out exactly as it would have been for a royal visit, complete with a Rolls Royce in the onboard garage.

The party then returned to the City Chambers for a presentation by Waterfront Edinburgh Limited on the other new developments taking place along the sea front on the Firth of Forth a buffet lunch was provided by the City Council and this was followed by a visit to see the latest techniques being used in the reinstatement of the Royal Mile. The afternoon finished with free time for shopping and visiting in Edinburgh City and a final tour dinner was held at the Northern House Hotel in Ingleston where we where entertained with traditional scottish music. The party returned to Belfast on Saturday by Ulsterbus Coach and HSS Ferry at the end of a most entertaining and enjoyable trip. Thanks to Grahame and Helen Fraser for organising and looking after the group so well, to British Waterways Board, Port of Leith and Edinburgh City Council for all the arrangements and hospitality, and our special thanks to all the sponsors who so generously supported the trip.

Eric Porter, Past Chair

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