IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Napier Court, GLASGOW, G60 5EF

Runs into the Freelands area of Old Kilpatrick.

Looking west to the Erskine Bridge from the Forth and Clyde Canal bank.

The towpath carries a long established cycle path from Glasgow to Balloch. Approaching the Erskine Bridge along a well wooded section of the canal.

Dense, largely ash woodland between the canal and the site of a fuel depot.

The clearing indicates the course that was followed by the Lanarkshire and Dumbarton railway line; see Image for further details. Here, the line was lower than its surroundings, and its course resembles a canal after prolonged periods of rainy weather. Not far to the left (north-east) is an actual canal (the Image); just to the right (south-west) of the dismantled line, but concealed by the trees, is a path (Image), and an area of waste ground that was formerly occupied by the Admiralty's fuel depot: http://www.geograph.org.uk/snippet/6052

The area occupied by the depot – http://www.geograph.org.uk/snippet/6052 and Image – is to the left. The line of trees to the right of the path conceals the course of a Image Just beyond that is the Image The Erskine Bridge is prominent in the background.

The concrete base of one of the buildings of the depot appears in the foreground. Just beyond the line of trees in the middle distance is the course of the dismantled Lanarkshire and Dumbarton railway line (see, for example, Image). Just beyond that is the Forth and Clyde Canal (see the map).

The steps shown here lead up to an old footbridge across a now Image; the footbridge gives access to the footpath and cycle route that runs along the south-western side of the Image The canal is less than 60 metres from the base of the steps. These steps stand alongside the path that is shown in Image The footbridge itself was built in the late nineteenth century, but the structures that are shown in the present photograph will have been built (or at least modified) later, in connection with the fuel depot.

About eighteen large fuel tanks once stood in this area, but they are now represented only by circular pools. This area of waste ground, formerly part of the fuel depot, is bounded on one side by the River Clyde, and on the other by, successively, a path (Image), a Image, and the Image (the path, the dismantled line and the canal run closely parallel to one another, as the map indicates). [On a subsequent visit, when I took my other photographs of the site, the lighting was better (though only slightly, with a very low winter sun), but a prolonged period of heavy rain had caused many of these pools to become connected, so that they did not have the circular form shown here.] The Erskine Bridge is in the background, on the right; compare Image For other structures in the area, see Image, Image, and Image The depot originally included a large area on the other side of the Forth and Clyde Canal; those other parts have been replaced by housing, but the fuel tanks lay within an area extending from Old Dalnottar Road to Dalnottar Cemetery. Together with the parts nearer the River Clyde, shown here, there were upwards of 70 large fuel tanks in total. In his book "The Clydebank Blitz" (1974), I.M.M.MacPhail mentions the damage sustained by the site as a whole in March of 1941: "three of the 70-80 Admiralty oil tanks at Dalnottar and Old Kilpatrick were bombed by the Luftwaffe and one of them set on fire". That tank was still burning on the second night of the Blitz, providing an easy target: ten more tanks were set on fire, eight of them at Dalnottar (i.e., the northern parts of the depot, now built over), the other two at Old Kilpatrick (i.e., this area, nearer the Clyde). The Secret Scotland page on the depot (see the end-note for the link) has many more photographs of this area. In addition, a Canmore link can be found there; Canmore has older aerial photographs of the site. See also Chris Allen's older Geograph images: Image, Image