Falkirk Wheel

On Saturday we took the train out of Edinburgh to the town of Falkirk to see the world's only boat lift, the Falkirk Wheel. Like everything else, this probably requires a bit of a history lesson.

Scotland used to have a series of canals that connected its rivers and cities. Two of these were the Clyde-Forth (the rivers of Glasgow and Edinburgh) and the Union Canals. The Union Canal was built about 80 feet higher than the Clyde-Forth Canal, so in order to connect them, the engineers constructed an elaborate series of 11 locks. When the trains came in the 1830s, the canals were not used so much, and eventually were closed. Now, fast forward to the celebration of the millenium. One of the millenial celebrations involved rebuilding Britain's waterways, which we have taken advantage of with our walks along the Thams towpath and Thames canal in and around Oxford. The Clyde-Forth and the Union Canals were also reopened, but most of the locks connecting them were not rebuilt.

Instead, the engineers built the Falkirk wheel, a huge rotating boat lift. A boat-- mostly pleasure craft and tour boats-- sails into the gondola at one level. The gondola, full of water and the boat,is raised or lower to the other level by a roating wheel more than 100 feet high. The ride takes four minutes and uses the same amount of electricity that is used to boil an electric tea kettle eight times, less than 10 kilowatts. We got on the tourboat (named the Archimedes-- if you remember him, you will get a chuckle) and made our way to the gondola. The wheel rotated, raising our gondola up 75 feet to the Union Canal while at the same time lowering the gondola on the other side. The ride was amazingly smooth, and if not the ground giving way on the horizon, we were not even aware that we were moving. The tour boat chugged along on the Union Canal for awhile, then we moved into the upper gondola and were lowered back down. OK, it is not exactly Splash Mountain but it is an amazing feat of engineering that replaces eight of the 11 locks.

So on this trip we have seen locks that dated from the early 17th century, and ones that date from the 21st century. And in one 24 hour period, we saw amazing architecture and engineering that spanned more than 600 years, from the Rosslyn Chapel to the Falkirk Wheel. (And, as we will tell you tomorrow, we went back a thousand years of engineering in the next 24 hours.)

Thanks to Sue Fairman who saw the Falkirk Wheel featured on tv and mentioned it to Deb in an email. We appreciate your comments, and we even respond to them! It was a great part of the Scottish phase of our Oxford Comma. On to Durham!