Wheel, Horses, Stones, and More (sung to the tune of London Bridges Falling Down)

Bob and I continue our Scottish adventure by visiting some purpose-built attractions as well as exploring new towns. We have been having good luck with the weather in terms of minimal rain so have been trying to take advantage while we can.

On Wednesday we headed out of Thornhill for an hour and a half drive to the town of Falkirk. It is almost halfway between (though a bit north of) Glasgow and Edinburgh. To help capture some of the tourists visiting the two larger cities, Falkirk has created some of its own attractions. One attraction also helps to reconnect Glasgow and Edinburgh for boat travelers. The other attraction is a pair of large horse-head sculptures, called the Kelpies, as part of the Helix project to create a local green space for the community. They are located about 15 minutes apart by car.

The Falkirk Wheel is a rotating boat lift (only one in the world) that raises boats by 79 feet, limiting the need for a series of locks to link the two canals. It opened in 2002. At the Wheel, you can pay to take a boat ride which takes you up and down in the wheel, but you can also walk or bike on some path, climb on a climbing wall, or do some other water activities. We rode the boat but decided you could experience it just as well by watching.

The wheel in its position when no boats are going through

The wheel in position to allow boats to move into the wheel for lifting

The elevated canal that you are lifted up to or down from

The view from the front of our boat before we descended to the lower canal

View of the surrounding area from the upper canal

Kelpies are a mythological creature that are usually in horse form but can take human form as well. They are said to have the strength and endurance of 100 horses.

Thursday we drove a much shorter distance (a little over 20 minutes) to the village of Sanquhar. We planned to do 2 hikes — 1 that would take us out of town and around the nearby community of Crawick and 1 that was around the village itself. Based on something we had seen in the paper that day and what we found when we got to Sanquhar, we ended up doing a little more.

Bonding with a statue in the war memorial area near where we parked

The following few photos are from the Crawick Multiverse which is a reclaimed former cast coal mine that has been transformed into a landscape art venue. It was created using materials found on site, including thousands of boulders half-buried below ground. It represents various cosmic patterns. The site was on our route anyway but had been coincidentally featured in the newspaper that morning.