11 Man-made Lakes to Explore in Scotland

Broadwood Loch is a man-made loch with surrounding woodland, grassland and lowland peat bog habitats. The wildlife ponds are home to damselflies and dragonflies and swallows can be seen swooping overhead in summer. There is a circular walk round the loch.

The Forth and Clyde Canal was built as a convenient route across Scotland for sea going vessels. It was a valuable inland waterway for moving goods at a time when roads were poor. Later passengers used the route. The canal is 35 miles long and it runs from the River Carron at Grangemouth to the River Clyde at Bowling, and had an important basin at Port Dundas in Glasgow.

The Gadloch is a fresh water loch in North Lanarkshire, situated near the town of Lenzie, Scotland. The Gadloch was originally much larger, but was reduced by the addition of a drainage tunnel. Local folklore has it that the tunnel was excavated by Napoleonic Prisoners of War, though it is generally accepted that the tunnel predates that period

Hillend Loch is an artificial lake, called a loch in Scots English, located to the east of Caldercruix in North Lanarkshire, Scotland. It is bordered on its south shore by the A89 road. The loch has a large catchment area in the hills which surround it and six feeder stream drain these hills and their moorland. It has a surface area of 345 acres and its surface is 650 feetabove sea level. The railway line between Airdrie and Bathgate runs along the southern shore of Hillend Loch

Lanark Loch is a man-made loch in the town of Lanark, South Lanarkshire, situated 2 kilometres south east of Lanark town centre. Covering an area of 4.9 hectares , it was built in the 19th century by the architect Hugh Marr at a place where there was a small pond which had previously been used by a local curling club. There is a small wooded island in the loch.

Linlithgow Loch is a shallow freshwater lake in West Lothian, Scotland. It has a mean depth of 2.3m and a maximum depth of 9.2m (SNH 2008). It was designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest in 1984 because it is the only lowland mesotrophic loch in West Lothian. Its botanical and ornithological interests also contributed to its SSSI status. In 2008, the status of Linlithgow Loch was revised from mesotrophic to eutrophic and the ornithological interests were removed as a characteristic att

Loch Callater is freshwater loch around five miles south of Braemar. The loch is surrounded by steep hills and so photo opportunities are abundant. The loch is around one mile in length. This area is popular with walkers and at the north end is the Callater Stable walkers' bothy.

Loch Etchachan is a remote freshwater loch set deep within the central Cairngorms plateau, in the Cairngorms National Park, located in the eastern Highlands of Scotland. It is the highest waterbody of its size in the UK, the surface being 927 metres above sea level.

Loch of Aboyne is a shallow, artificial formed, freshwater loch in Grampian, Scotland. It lies 1+1⁄4 miles northeast of Aboyne and 26 miles west-southwest of Aberdeen. An earthen dam was constructed around 1834 to retain the loch. It also served as a reservoir for a nearby mill. It has one of the finest submerged floras in the area with 8 species of pondweeds. There is a high diversity of leeches and pond snails and modest numbers of passage and wintering wildfowl including wigeon, goosander and

This large freshwater loch is located near Dunecht and Kirkton of Skene in Aberdeenshire. It's a very picturesque area with the loch surrounded by attractive woodland and reedbeds. It's great for wildlife too with concentrations of wildfowl in autumn and winter in particular greylag geese, goldeneye ducks and pink-footed geese. Common gulls and otters are also found on the loch.

The Union Canal, is a canal in Scotland, running from Falkirk to Edinburgh, constructed to bring minerals, especially coal, to the capital. It was opened in 1822 and was initially successful, but the construction of railways, particularly the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway, which opened in 1842, diminished its value as a transport medium. It fell into slow commercial decline and was closed to commercial traffic in 1933.