The Beautiful and Damned

I guess we did make it out of Dunkeld one day, but only as far as Pitlochry dam and fish ladder, about 15 miles to the north, and a place I don't think I've been in decades.

Engineers designed Pitlochry dam to help prevent the frequent floods in this region, as well as bring much needed electricity to the area - in 1943 only one in a hundred crofts in the Highlands had electricity.

The model above shows the parts of the Tummel Valley scheme over its 1,800 square kilometres.  It produces around 20% of all hydro power in Scotland and is one of the six large schemes built in the Highlands in the 1940s and 1950s.  It's a good example of the clever planning and careful engineering that go into creating such schemes. Successful hydro schemes elsewhere in Europe have the advantage of even higher mountains and larger volumes of water, but here in Scotland engineers had to make the best possible use of more limited resources - in the construction of Scotland's hydro schemes over 300 km of tunnels were blasted, 54 main power stations were built and the workforce reached 12,000 people.

The fish pass and visitor centre is one of the main reasons for visiting Pitlochry dam, and to see salmon jumping was certainly the reason I went there as a kid.  It's too cold, and late in the year, for that now, but Scotland's approach to managing fish in hydro schemes is unique in the world.

Salmon and sea trout return to breed in rivers where they hatched, but dams interfere with this natural cycle.  Salmon fishing is also an inheritable right passed down through families, so fishermen made sure that the Acts of Parliament setting up the schemes protected fish stocks.  Dams with good breeding grounds upstream have fish passes, but where this couldn't be done, the Hydro Board had to pay the landowners for lost fisheries.

Who knew salmon were not just called salmon?!

Engineers designed Pitlochry dam with fish in mind - thirty-four pools allow them to bypass the dam on their journeys upstream while screens keep large fish away from the turbines at the top. Young fish can, however, pass safely through them on their return to the sea as the fish-friendly design of the blades acts like a revolving door.  The North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board started counting fish heading upstream in the early 1950s and today SSE continues to count at eighteen sites to check that the fish passes still work.

Looking down the River Tummel from the top of the dam

The bottom....

...and top of the fish ladder

After we'd walked across the top of the dam and viewed the ladder though, we called it a day - it was just too cold - and there were more books, chat and food waiting for us back in Birnham.