Day 237 - Forth & Clyde Canal: Kilsyth to Falkirk

Are we there yet? We've done so much walking in our lives that we often joke with each other, "Where exactly we are trying to get to?" LOL!

After another breakfast that saw Phil once again starting his day the true Scottish way (porridge topped with whisky), we found ourselves back at Croy Station ready for another day of walking. It had felt like we had just left, although we were somehow energized again and ready to face another day. I wasn't thinking of the 26 km that lay ahead, just that today I would see the world-famous Falkirk Wheel.

We walked the 2 km back to the canal path to pick up our route from where we had left it yesterday. We did take a short-cut through a park which indicated we would see signs of the Antonine Wall. Maybe they meant we would see THE sign FOR the Antonine Wall, because we never saw anything else despite knowing we were only really looking for a straight mound of dirt. And then the path we were suppose to take that would cut off about 15 minutes of walking back to the canal really only existed in the minds of the Google Map people. So, as today's guide, I couldn't look at Phil, the Orienteering Champion, until I had us back to the point we would have been had the path actually existed. ;-)

These escapee ducks know the yellow vest means its safe
to come out. 

Lots of countryside and wonderful flora and fauna along this route. At one point we came upon a gentleman coming toward us who stopped just as we noticed a couple of white ducks ... domestic escapees, I presume. As if out of nowhere, a flotilla of white ducks were swimming toward him. Phil commented to him that they obviously knew him. He seemed rather chuffed, and replied that he had been coming every day for years to feed them.

The Falkirk Wheel from the Forth & Clyde
canal.

Other than our meeting of the duck whisperer, this section was one of the more remote sections of the canal walk so far. With just a few cyclist and the occassional person who looked like they were walking home from work, but from where and to where we have no idea.

We went through a place with the pretty name of Bonnybridge and then a while later came upon the Falkirk Wheel, with it's busy visitor centre. It's here that the Forth & Clyde canal meets the Union Canal. The F&C heads north to join the Clyde, while the Union heads into Edinburgh. When the Union Canal was built, a set of 11 locks were required to bring the canal down to the level of the F&C. It took about a day to navigate. With the demise of the canals for commercial use, these locks were dismantled in 1933.

In the 1990s, plans got underway to reconstruct the canals for the Millennium. Rather than recreate the locks, ideas were sought for an alternative way of getting boats down the 100 feet between the canal levels. A host of ideas and £84.5 million later, and you have the Falkirk Wheel.

The crows wait their turn for a
ride on the world's only
canal boat Ferris wheel.

There's no real economic need for the wheel, but it does give the inner child in every engineer a chance to show thanks to their parents for buying them a Meccano set as a kid.

The wheel is now a huge tourist attraction with 5.5 million people visiting the site since it was opened by the Queen in 2002, with most arriving by tour bus if the parking lot was any indication.

You can watch a quick, great video of how the wheel works here. It's actually quite fascinating ... but in the end seems to me rather like an expensive Ferris wheel. To take a gondola boat up and then back down on the wheel costs about $24 Canadian. Apparently, for each turn it only uses the same amount of energy as is needed to boil eight electric kettles for tea ... although electric kettle are notoriously inefficient, so not sure that is the best choice for the marketing brochure...and at $24, that's one bloody expensive cuppa.

We watched the wheel rotate from a position at the top level canal. It held a sort of fascination for about 30 seconds, but somehow when you are waiting in the blazing sun, the 4-minute journey time seems a lifetime. It's all the damn safety measures before and after and the moving boats in and out (another 20 minutes) that when it does move, it feels like it's doing so at such a slow rate that after a while you find your sun-bleached mind wandering to wonder just how long the paint took to dry on it.

View down the canal from the upper entrance to the Falkirk Wheel.

Phil seemed pleased to learn we were halfway through
the walk. For some reason, at this point in the day,
halfway didn't seem nearly far enough.

Of course, wanting to deprive ourselves of a chance to sleep, we didn't shell out the money on a ticket for the gondola ride, so had to hike up the hill, which by this point in the day was a wee bit tiring. However, it was finding that the next train station, Falkirk High, was still another 2.5 miles away that nearly did me in. But I sucked it up, ignored the blister forming on the sole of my foot and the heat stroke sensations being caused by the unrelenting Scottish sunshine and, finding my inner Scot, walked the rest of the way to the station.

From this point on in the journey, we are following the Union Canal into Edinburgh. Oh yeah, on route to the station there was lots more countryside and flora, fauna, yadda, yadda, yadda.  Are we there yet?

Seriously, the countryside really is quite pretty.