One of my Scotland bucket list stops has been Falkirk. The Falkirk Wheel on the Forth and Clyde Canal is an engineering marvel. The rotating Wheel moves boats 79’/24m from one part of the canal to the other eliminating 11 locks that were the previous way to span the different heights.
It takes about 4 minutes to move a boat (or two) from one level to the other. First a boat moves into the water filled carriage then a gate comes up to separate the water in the lift from the canals. Once both lifts are filled they are balanced enough that I’m told that it takes the same amount of electricity required to boil 8 cups of tea to complete the entire rotation. YouTube will provide videos as I don’t know how to add video to my site. Damn.
There are still a couple of locks needed to pass as the difference in levels are still 11m/36′.
And the views from the upper canal are quite spectacular.
The second thing I wanted to see in Falkirk are the Kelpies. I joked at the Wheel that I always thought they were bigger but these are just wee models.
Directions to the Kelpies is simple. Cross the canal and take a right. When you see the Kelpies, take a picture. About 4 miles.
The canal walk is very tranquil and more important, considering this is Scotland, flat. As I walked it passed a dozen locks I wondered how the fishing was. The next bend revealed a fisherman, Jim Finlay, bringing in a 6″ pike for quick release. Pikes in this part of the world can reach 1 1/2 – 2 m/5-6.5′!
And this swallow was so chilled I took this shot without needing to zoom!
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Amazing engineering. I don’t know how this was funded but with much our infrastructure crumbling, we in the US should be ashamed of ourselves.
I have to stop for now but I have looked at the posts from June 1 to this one and enjoyed all of them. I had to get out a map to understand where these various cities were. Shame on me – I didn’t know hardly anything about the Shetland Islands – I just knew they had ponies and wool. I especially like the buildings with the boat hull roofs.
You must have done a lot of reading and planning to hit all these spots mostly ON FOOT. Betty and I went to Boston a couple of weeks ago with no advanced plan and probably walked past amazing history without knowing it was there.