Caledonian Canal
canal in Scotland, UK
The Caledonian Canal connects the Scottish east coast at Inverness with the west coast at Corpach near Fort William in Scotland. The canal was constructed in the early nineteenth century by Scottish engineer Thomas Telford.
Route
The canal runs some 60 miles (100 kilometres) from northeast to southwest and reaches 106 feet (32 metres) above sea level. Only one third of the entire length is man-made, the rest being formed by Loch Dochfour, Loch Ness, Loch Oich, and Loch Lochy. These lochs are located in the Great Glen, on a geological fault in the Earth's crust. There are 29 locks (including eight at Neptune's Staircase, Banavie), four aqueducts and 10 bridges in the course of the canal.
Northern section
The canal starts at its north-eastern end at Clachnaharry Sea Lock, built at the end of a man-made peninsula to ensure that boats could always reach the deep water of the Beauly Firth. Because the peninsula is built with mud foundations, it has required regular maintenance ever since. Next to the lock is the former lock-keeper's house, a two-storey building with a single-storey bothy at its western end and an enclosed garden. At an unknown date, the house was divided into two, and in 2005 the eastern half became offices for Scottish Canals.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Caledonian Canal” is canal in Scotland, UK. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Caledonian, Canal and canal, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q909073. The Library of Congress control number is sh97005609. Authority coordinates are 57.112, -4.739. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2005.
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This entry incorporates text from “Caledonian Canal” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.