POWER FROM THE WATER

The Galloway Hydros

SAIL INTO KIRKCUDBRIGHT Harbour as night falls. Coming up the channel between the mud flats of Kirkcudbright Bay, you see the lights of isolated houses on either shore. The town lights beckon you to the quay, shelter from the wind, a quick one in the Steam Packet Hotel.

Heat, light and shelter. The power for this comes from water travelling the other way, down the Water of Dee, emptying into Kirkcudbright Bay.

Leave the harbour square by day now, and drive towards Castle Douglas. Just north of Kirkcudbright lies Tongland, where from a small bridge over the Dee you see, cunningly concealed, the surprisingly large Tongland Dam.

Tongland is the largest and last of six power stations that draw power from these waters as they collect and fall in the Galloway Hills and drain to the Solway Firth. The scheme is a model of unobtrusive and ecologically sensitive hydro-electric engineering and is studied by engineers from all round the world. It was the 1920s brainchild of Colonel William McLellan.

Loch Ken and Tongland

The A75 crosses the Water of Dee at the aptly named Bridge O'Dee. Just north of there begins the ten miles of beautiful Loch Ken.

Loch Ken was dammed at its southern end in the early 1930s by Glenlochar Barrage. It is a major nature reserve and a breeding ground for countless varieties of wild birds. Galloway Hydros has an agreement with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds under which, at its own expense, it keeps steady the water levels in Loch Ken.

Loch Ken is the reservoir for the Tongland Power Station. Tongland has its own smaller reservoir, formed by damming the Dee where it flowed through a deep but narrow gorge.

Power in the north

After building the Glenlochar Barrage, the engineers went on to draw power from the north, tapping the waters that flow south from Loch Doon, high in the Galloway Mountains, into Loch Ken.

To do this, they built low-head power stations at Drumjohn, Kendoon, Carsfad and Earlstovn.

Power from the west

Water for the last stage of the scheme falls high up in wild Glen Trool, where Robert the Bruce ambushed the English. This is the source of The Blackwater of Dee.

Building Clatteringshaws Dam across The Blackwater flooded the marshland below Loch Trool. The engineers built the remarkable Glenlee Tunnel to draw the waters of the new Clatteringshaws Loch down to Glenlee Power Station, 370 feet below. This created the only high-head high-speed power station in the scheme.