SUMMER STEAM EXCURSIONS AT BO'NESS
Bo’ness
or Borrow’s Town-Ness is near the beginning of the Roman Antonine
Wall dating from AD 142, built to keep the barbarians from the gates.
The Scottish Railway Preservation Society has its evocative base,
the largest in Scotland, at Bo’ness by the old Bo’ness
and Kinneil Railway providing summer steam excursions to Birkhill
Clay Mine, just over three miles away through ancient woodland to
view 300m year old fossils. Hamilton’s Cottage is a 1920’s
miner’s cottage, preserved. Kinneil House (closed Tues pm
& Fri Oct-March), just west, a 16th century building, which commenced
restoration in 1936 when its fine murals and ceilings were re-discovered
by workmen.
Kinneil Museum, next door (open daily except Sun in summer, Sat
only in winter) consists of the 17th century stables converted to show
2,000 years of the estate’s history including the original little
shed (bothy) where James Watt built the first ever steam engine.
15th c. Blackness Castle (open daily, restricted Oct-March),
north, jutting quite like a ship into the Forth, has been besieged,
used as a prison, a powder magazine and a youth hostel. One cell in
the old prison floods at the spring tide leaving the prisoner to pray
for the neap.
Industrial Grangemouth has an interesting Museum which
traces the town’s growth from 18th century canal base to today.
Falkirk, though deep in Scotland’s industrial heartland,
has the best preserved sections of the Roman Antonine Wall, a
ramparted ditch with accompanying military road and wall. Forts were
built every two miles along its 37 mile length and the wall can be viewed
in the Callander Park Housing Estate, east and at Watling Lodge, west.
A little bit out of town, further west before Bonnybridge, stands Rough
Castle, amongst the remnants of industrial past, where you can get
the feel of the once bleak and lonely outpost of an empire staffed by
hard men, foreign legionnaires of their time, exiled or self-exiled
for reasons lost in the mists of history.
