![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2dc551c3-199d-4bfc-a3c1-68a5f9f56c34_5080-1.jpg\")
Elevated view of Loch Katrine. Ellen’s Isle and Ben Venue Mountain can be seen in the distance 1877. Photo: Thomas Annan, public domain<\/p>\nWhen a mains pipe tore open under Pollokshaws Road earlier this year, the tap water in a succession of Southside neighbourhoods cut out. A little reservoir sulking in the pipes at my flat trickled away. Then the tap heads twisted with a parched hiss. Does this sound like the beginning of something serious, I half-wondered. Water isn\u2019t society until it\u2019s taken away, and then it becomes unmasked as the baseline for everything you need to be civil. Coffee, showers, toilets. But also washing up, laundry, radiators. My neighbours offered some bottled mineral water, and I gratefully poured the dog his first (and last) bowl of Evian.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At last, by late evening, Scottish Water vans turned up and dumped crates of plastic bottles in the close \u2014 simply (and slightly ominously) labelled: \u201cDrinking Water\u201d. Meanwhile, gushing out from the broken pipe nearby was one of the most deluxe municipal water supplies anywhere in the UK \u2014 a feed from a great blue beauty of a loch so wantonly romantic that Sir Walter Scott felt moved to write an epic six-canto poem about it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The next day, when the taps came back on, the water sputtered, but it was still glorious \u2014 the famously fresh \u201ccooncil juice\u201d brought to Glasgow from Loch Katrine up in the Trossachs. Water in Scotland is more than civility; it\u2019s also a common wealth, an asset interchangeable with the famous landscape. Scottish Water is a public company owned by the Scottish government, and the cost of its work is bundled into the admittedly hefty Glasgow City Council tax (hence the \u201ccooncil juice\u201d nickname). In England and Wales water is a household bill paid directly into private coffers, with very mixed and unaccountable results.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Elevated view of Loch Katrine. Ellen’s Isle and Ben Venue Mountain can be seen in the distance 1877. Photo: Thomas Annan, public domain<\/p>\n
Most of the Scottish tap supply also comes from surface waters \u2014 rivers, lochs, burns \u2014\u00a0rather than ground waters, which explains its softness. It hasn\u2019t had time to pick up the calcium, magnesium, potassium, and sodium in the rocks and earth that make for filmy cups of tea and chalky, stubborn lathers of shampoo.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Glasgow\u2019s tap water is so soft and good it is even promoted to students at the University of Glasgow. The water is also used as a boast by Tennent\u2019s lager, which talks about the Loch Katrine provenance of its biggest ingredient as if its brewers were trekking for miles to the source, rather than simply turning on a tap.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But all water companies \u2014 and all tap drinkers \u2014\u00a0now face an equal threat: the warming of the planet. Up at Loch Katrine, work has already begun \u201cto secure the next century of water quality\u201d says ecologist Dr Mark Williams, head of sustainability at Scottish Water. Climate change is going to change the cost and quality of what comes out the tap, he says, unless we adapt the landscape itself to prevent erosion from heavier rainfall and longer dry spells.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He shows me a picture of a huge exposed gash, or \u201chag\u201d, in the peat above the northern edge of the loch, taken this year. \u201cThere\u2019s a huge amount of peatland in the upland areas that needs improvement,\u201d he says. \u201cThe organic material is being washed out into Katrine. When it rains, you want the water to hold in the peat.\u201d The poorer quality of the peatland has developed over time by draining water for the benefit of sheep grazing, along with the natural vandalism of deer trampling down vegetation. When combined with the wilder rainfalls that come with climate change, this erosion leads to run-off from the peat, rather than retention of water in the bog. Decay of plant matter in the peat hags also gives off carbon.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The more all of this happens, the more the water needs expensive treatment to make it fit for consumption, a cost that will ultimately fall on the consumer. Scottish Water\u2019s plan is to create a carbon sink and better drainage in the land around the loch. \u201cIt\u2019s a long term project, and it will see a new native woodland with a mix of upland deciduous broadleaf and Scots pine, birch, and rowan; we\u2019re also managing grazing and restoring peatland,\u201d Williams says. He adds that Scottish Water regards the Katrine estate as a \u201creal signature area of land, it is an example of us trying to do the right thing.\u201d The 10-year plan was approved last year, and the first phase began in January.<\/p>\n
Water hardness in the UK. Map: Alasdair Rae<\/p>\n
Lovely though Glasgow\u2019s water is, it has still been sanitised on the 34-mile journey from source to city. So I decide to drive up to the loch for a drink of winter water in its purest form. A soft, gloomy squall has arrived before me. Close to the shoreline, the water chops from black to brown, the colour of wet tree roots. Further up the loch, against mysterious skerries and wooded islets, sheets of water are pulling in grey gusts in the crosswinds.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Two small boats, the Rob Roy III and the Lady of the Lake, are tied up alongside the grand Walter Scott steamship, and all three idle their engines at the southern pier, waiting for passengers. The \u201cearlier world\u201d of the 450-million-year-old Arrochar Alps that Scott described surrounding Loch Katrine in ‘The Lady of the Lake’ looms high over the scene, poised to reassert total mountain power after the pleasure boat timetable stops at 3pm.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There are two main types of water here: the wild and the tamed. Just along the tarmac road that snakes for a few miles around the north-east lochside, there are padlocked gates to Scottish Water monitoring stations, and a long stone terrace brings a loud, organised chute of gushing water down from Glen Finglas waterfall, with the banks of the loch itself held neatly by a stone wall.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/IMG_1084.jpg\")
Sir Walter Scott steamship. Photo: Natalie Whittle<\/p>\n
The managed side of the water has been in action since the mid 19th century, when fast-growing Glasgow was festering with slums, cholera and typhoid. It really needed a clean drink of water. Victorian engineers stood in this same spot and, in spite of the need to cross several wide and deep valleys, and with no comparable waterworks project anywhere in Great Britain, decided that they could still pull off the construction of an aqueduct all the way from loch to city. They were right.<\/p>\n
For their ‘Katrine aqueduct’, which still carries Glasgow\u2019s water supply, they had to bore tunnels and lay three-foot wide cast-iron pipes through whinstone, gneiss and mica slate riddled with quartz veins. Its raised sections were hoisted over rushing rivers and ravines, requiring 3,000 workers to finish it over three years. The work was paid for by the city at a cost of around \u00a31.5m (equivalent to about \u00a3176m in today\u2019s money), with the start-up costs loaned to the waterworks company using Glasgow\u2019s own property assets for security.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Appropriately, it was raining royally on October 14, 1859, the day that Queen Victoria sailed up Loch Katrine to cut the ribbon on this grand new showstopper of municipal engineering. The heavens opened. \u201cIncessant torrents\u201d, in the words of the Scotsman\u2019s reporter at the time. \u201cDown it came in perfect sheets of wet.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Enjoying Natalie’s Loch Katrine love letter? You can get two totally free<\/strong><\/b> editions of The Bell every week by signing up to our regular mailing list. Just click the button below. No cost. Just old school local journalism. <\/p>\n As the squall settled into a downpour, I could picture the monarch\u2019s short, stout profile heading for the shore in all her dreich pomp. But I found it surprisingly hard to get close to the water itself: the raised stone wall following the road is in the way. In the end I took a sip from a little waterfall trickle coming from the bracken-and tree-covered sides of Primrose Hill, to the right of the road. It was clean and sweet, but I couldn\u2019t taste it without thinking of the threats Williams mentioned from the past \u2014 sheep parasites, for one \u2014 nor for those he talked about for the future: algae and other hotter-world poisons.\u00a0<\/p>\n More than water<\/p>\n If you want to be assured that Glasgow\u2019s present council juice greatness isn\u2019t just myth or marketing, ask a speciality coffee barista. Matt Cowie, the co-founder of Amulet Coffee, which opened in Partick in the West End a few months ago, is obsessed with the city\u2019s tap water, which he describes as sitting at the \u201chigh end of the spectrum\u201d but intriguingly also \u201ca perfect baseline to build an even better water off of\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n Bottled mineral water is not necessarily as nice as Glasgow tap, he insists. But for his coffee to taste as good as possible, it still needs some tweaks \u2014 albeit to a lesser, and less costly degree than the London speciality shop brigade, who have to resort to reverse osmosis to manage the capital\u2019s hard-as-nails water.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe future of coffee is all in the water,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s the biggest upgrade you can give yourself after a good grinder. Glasgow is so soft compared to London, it\u2019s infinitely better. It\u2019s already basically distilled.\u201d Even so, he says, \u201cevery morning we batch up 10 litres of our own water, we add magnesium, calcium and potassium\u201d, hardening the tap water a little to a secret sauce level. \u201cMinerals affect the way we perceive the aroma, if the water is too soft you\u2019re leaving flavour on the table.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n This aspect of specialty coffee is new to me, but water seems to be taken very seriously by most self-respecting practitioners. \u201cAll the cutting edge places have excellent water science,\u201d Cowie says. \u201cGreytone in Bristol has amazing water, Zennor filter coffee [in Glasgow] is so good.\u201d<\/p>\n Another nearby Partick newcomer, Kahawa Mzuri, is run by Kieran Darlington, who grew up in Nairobi, Kenya, where many homes don\u2019t have tap water, he says, but instead use water filters and gallon-water butts. \u00a0He came to study in Glasgow \u2013 and decided to stay. He is now using his cafe as a showcase for Kenyan speciality coffee, and working with producers who promote ethical farming and trading. Like Cowie, he has a nuanced appreciation for refining the local tap water. \u201cHaving some mineral content also helps you perceive different flavours.\u201d<\/p>\n He notes that \u201cAlmost all speciality shops will have a water filter attached to their espresso machine. The tap water won\u2019t be the same as what\u2019s in the shop. But what we have in Glasgow is a really good starting point, we can play around with the mineral content without too much difficulty. We\u2019re in a good position here.\u201d<\/p>\n The future of thirst<\/p>\n Throughout the course of my research, I keep coming back to something Mark Williams suggested to me early on: that your view of \u201cgood\u201d water depends heavily on where you grew up. Williams, for example, said he\u2019ll forever hold the tap water from Llandegfyd reservoir in south Wales in his heart. I also grew up in south Wales, but took the clarity of its water totally for granted until I spent more than a decade living in London, feeling unrefreshed by the municipal mouthwash effect of every glass from the tap. After years in Glasgow I\u2019ve come to really appreciate the big lungfuls of tap that you can drink without feeling like a chlorinated fish. And in winter, I love the chilliness of it too, thanks to the temperature of the pipes, of course, but also as a reminder that your thirst is being met by an arm of the sea.\u00a0<\/p>\n The mountain auras of Loch Katrine have run down Glaswegian throats ever since Queen Victoria\u2019s dousing on a dour day in 1859, apparently wearing a Stuart tartan dress, white bonnet and a black veil. Onlookers sniffed that she was dressed \u201cplainly\u201d, but it was an appropriate choice to mark an everyday luxury afforded to anyone who calls the city home.\u00a0<\/p>\n But the open banks of peat in the Trossachs spell a warning of a possible future \u2014 a universal \u201cDrinking Water\u201d treated so vigorously it tastes of nothing but the treatment plant. When work resumes at Loch Katrine on the creation of a new forest, it will be a quieter affair than the bombastic Victorian rock-blasting: instead, it will rely on planting, repairing, and clearing. But it\u2019s no less significant for maintaining Glasgow\u2019s water. As another of Scott\u2019s lines has it: \u201cWithin Loch Katrine’s gorge we’ll fight\u201d.<\/p>\n Welcome to 2026, year of The Bell. We\u2019re Glasgow’s new newspaper, delivered entirely by email. We hope you enjoyed Natalie’s lovely piece about the source of our tap water. So you don’t miss future stories like this, sign up to our mailing list and get two totally free<\/strong><\/b> editions of The Bell every week: a Monday briefing, full of everything you need to know about that\u2019s going on in the city; and an in-depth weekend piece like this one.<\/p>\n
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Loch Katrine 2025. Photo: Natalie Whittle<\/p>\n![\"CTA](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/the-bell-final-assets_The-bell-icon_only-red-circle-1.png\"){kind=icon}
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