h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I must add the river Forth to this list.

From Loch Ard to the North Sea, the Forth wanders through Scotlands history with highlights like the battles of Stirling Bridge (1297), and Bannockburn (1314). But it is its Bridges which serve to most define the river to the world with the image of the rail bridge in Hitchcocks '39 Steps' a lasting memory to a generation.

For myself the river holds many happy memories:- days spent wandering along it's more gentle upper reaches with a rod in one hand and trying to wave away midges with the other. Sailing out to the Bass Rock at the mouth of the estuary and being mobbed by hundreds of Gannets and Herring Gulls and sticking a gloved hand into a hole in the ground and pulling it out complete with clown-billed Puffin trying to bite a finger off. Shore fishing of the neuk of Fife and reeling in a catch only to find that I had half a fish and that grinning seal out there had the other half. Sitting in a small boat in bright sunshine with a friend and a couple of bottles for company, while 200 yards away the sea mist formed an impenetrable wall complete with foghorn blasts.

Enough, lets just say that I like rivers and the Forth most of all.