Sunday, October 2

Our final destination on our holiday is Edinburgh. However, we planned a slight detour to visit the Falkirk Wheel, which is more or less between Stirling & Edinburgh & about 45 minutes’ drive from Edinburgh.

The Falkirk Wheel is a modern version of a hydraulic boat lift that lifts & lowers canal narrowboats a height of 79 feet – joining the Union Canal with the Forth & Clyde Canal. It went into service in 2002.

This is an amazing piece of Scottish engineering. Boats float in a tub that rotates inside the circle at each end of the wheel. The tub always stays level while the whole mechanism rotates from top to bottom.

We watched the wheel rotate through a cycle. It was surprisingly quiet & fast & only took about 5 minutes from start to finish.

We had lots of fun going through the locks on our narrowboat but I’m not certain that I could take this ride.

Here’s a link to a video on YouTube that someone else took of the wheel in operation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fX6kJKjg4y0

Cheers!