I started a post back in November, after spotting that Strathclyde Loch was missing some water.
Seems some maintenance was being carried out, and (I guess) the sluice valves had been opened to reduce the level.
Although I collected the general views without issue, when I went back to take pics of the revealed bottoms of the overspills and spillways. Normally well covered by water leaving the loch, I had found the lower water level meant these routes were almost completely drained, revealing normally hidden views.
That plan came to an end when I almost killed myself after stepping on some silt on a slope at the loch, and was lucky not to crack the back of my head on the concrete as my feet slipped from beneath me. However, this friction-free fall onto my back was sufficiently violent to send me crawling for home immediately, and unable to continue.
When I got back, although the level was still low, the sluices had been closed and the level was rising, so I’d missed my chance, and just had to make do.
As there’s no real choice of where the fairly wide pics can be taken, I had to try stitching to get the whole view in one pic, with between 12 and 17 shots being needed to never the area.
This was the most interesting view, at the NW end of the loch.
When first seen, there was almost no water falling from the loch, with all the water rushing from a square opening at the bottom corner of the wall on the left. The door can barely be seen now, but can be seen (a dark square) if you look carefully, just above the water’s edge.
I wondered how this door was opened and closed against the pressure of the water, and found there was a valve control behind that was, as seen below, presumably operated by a hand crank.
The dragon’s teeth, or dissipaters, were also fairly dry at the first visit, but were now also beginning to see an increase in the surrounding water.
Moving onto the similar feature at the SE end of the loch, the story was much the same, and I’d also lost the chance of catching these with almost no water covering these features too.
Notably, there doesn’t seem to be any sort of sluice valve or similar bypass at this end, at least I couldn’t see anything, or any sign of another door or valve control.
I forgot about another two outlets provided between these large overspills.
I’m not sure what facilities they have, but seem to recall some metal trapdoors or manhole covers, and these may lead to additional outlets, although they are locked so it’s not possible to see anything.
Related dragon’s teeth.
I had originally planned to reshoot the overspill shots once I’d seen the result, but that obviously wasn’t possible.
As yet, I’m still not sure how to frame these multiple shots when they require wide shots that introduce hefty edge distortion.
The software often seems to be able to cope IF I take the right contributing images, but if I miss out area around the edge, or the wide angle shots have distortion where images try to stitch, then things don’t go well.
This can be seen in some areas above, where the black means I missed a bit, and some crazy (wrong) edge stitching has been creating.
I just have to keep trying.
Secret Scotland 