Loch Katrine

William Watson, a renowned scholar of Scottish place names, judged Katrine to be "thoroughly Pictish" in origin, and to derive from an extension of the Celtic root , meaning "dark, gloomy place", a name referring to the loch's heavily forested shores. The name Katrine has also been hypothesized to represent cateran, from the Gaelic , a collective word meaning cattle thief or possibly peasantry. ==Physical geography==

Loch Katrine is a serpentine lake oriented WNW–ESE, about long, with a maximum width of almost exactly between the mouths of the Letter Burn and the Strone Burn on the northern shore to a small bay on the opposite shore. The mean breadth, obtained by dividing the area of the loch by its length, is , 7.5% of the length. The loch covers an area of , and drains a mountainous area, some eight times greater, of about . It contains an estimated of water with a mean depth of , being over 40% of the maximum observed depth of . Near the upper end of the loch a rocky barrier crosses the lake from Portnellan by the Black Island to Budha Maoil Mhir an-t Salainn. The deepest sounding along this barrier is , and the shallowest is . On its lower side the contour line almost crosses the lake. Above it there is another basin over in length, the greatest depth of which is , immediately in front of the rocky ridge just referred to. Westwards the lake shallows, and at its head it has been silted up for a distance of by alluvium laid down by Glengyle Water. On the northern shore are the Brenchoile hunting lodge and the farms Letter (Gaelic: ), Edra (Gaelic: "between them"), Strone (Gaelic: "the nose"), Coilachra, Portnellan (Gaelic: "port of the island") and Glengyle (Gaelic: "glen of a lowlander"); on the southern are The Dhu (Gaelic: "the black") at the western end of the loch, Stronachlachar, the Royal Cottage, Culligart and Glasahoile (Gaelic: "greywood"). The roads and paths do not circle the loch completely, as the southern road stops at Glasahoile. Islands There are several small islands in Loch Katrine such as Ellen's Isle (Gaelic: "the shingly isle"), the Black Isle and Factor's Island (Gaelic: ). ==History==

In 1671, Rob Roy MacGregor was born at the head of the loch. Loch Katrine is now owned by Scottish Water, and has been the primary water reservoir for much of the city of Glasgow and its surrounding areas since 1859. The water level has been artificially raised by around – the loch can be drawn down by a maximum of . The water drawn down provides gravitational flow, using the Katrine aqueduct, to the Milngavie water treatment works via two aqueducts and of tunnel. Old photos showing the building of the aqueducts were discovered in a skip in Possilpark in 2018. The treatment works in Milngavie are almost above sea level: sufficient to provide adequate water pressure to the majority of the town without the need for pumping. The system can deliver up to a day. Construction was started in 1855 and the works was opened by Queen Victoria in 1859. The aqueduct was built under the guidance of the eminent civil engineer John Frederick Bateman (1810–1889). The second aqueduct was opened in 1901. Water levels are supplemented via a dam and short tunnel from Loch Arklet, a reservoir between Loch Katrine and Loch Lomond, beside the road to Inversnaid; this project was completed in 1914. A longer tunnel beneath Ben A'an bringing water from the Glen Finglas Reservoir was completed in 1958, and the dam was completed in 1965. The loch is the subject of The Athole Highlanders' Farewell to Loch Katrine. == See also ==