A Scottish Adventure

We don't own a car. We currently live just a couple of miles from Steve's work, so we decided to forego a car for the time being. Steve bikes to and from work, and we have good bus service available. So when we rent a car like we did for our trip to Leeds and Preston, we try to take advantage of it. On our trip back home, we took an alternate route and did some Scottish sightseeing.

Our first stop was to see The Kelpies, two thirty meter, 300 ton, steel statues representing the draft horses that brought the canals to life at their inception. The statues were built in 90 days in 2013, and are modeled after two Clydesdales named Duke and Baron. To learn more about The Kelpies and to see a time-lapse video of their construction, go here.

I had seen the 1:10 scale models of The Kelpies when they came to Inverness a few months ago, but I wasn't prepared for how huge the originals actually were. Look how small the people look!

The Kelpies stand where the Forth and Clyde Canal meets up with the River Carron. The canal was extended and a turning hub was created at The Kelpies. It was opened in April 2014.

A portion of the Forth and Clyde Canal.

My brother-in-law visited The Kelpies about a week before we did and he had a photo on his phone of the horse next to the turning pool. I really liked it and was quite pleased to be able to take one of my own. Though his was taken on a sunnier day and was a lot brighter.

The lock on the turning hub

They had a Lego version of The Kelpies inside the visitors' centre.

The bridge over the lock that joins the Forth and Clyde Canal to the River Carron.

The view from the bridge.

Not overly far from The Kelpies is the Falkirk Wheel, a rotating boat lift that connects the Forth and Clyde Canal with the Union Canal. Because of the hilly terrain, the Union Canal is thirty-five meters higher than the Forth and Clyde Canal. Up until the 1930s, the canals were connected by a staircase of eleven locks that took a day to navigate. The staircase was dismantled in 1933.

In 1994, discussion began to reconnect the canals and a variety of ideas were hatched. Ultimately, the powers-that-be settled upon the wheel. Construction of the £84.5 million Millenium Link project to rejoin the canals commenced in 1998. The wheel was built in Derbyshire and then transported via thirty-five truckloads to Falkirk, where it was reassembled and put in place via a crane. Queen Elizabeth II opened the wheel in 2002.

The wheel uses very little energy to operate. To learn more about its construction and to see a video of how it works, go here.

The wheel was in action as we walked toward the site. That orange block

is the stern of one of the tour boats being lifted up to the Union Canal.

It was just about to the top when we arrived at the site.

I took a photo of this sign so you can see an aerial view of the Falkirk Wheel. A lock connects the Forth and Clyde Canal to the wheel's basin. From there, boats travel into the wheel and are then transported to the Union Canal above. The only boats we saw using the wheel were the tour boats.

We didn't go on the wheel. That's something we'll do when we have more time. But we did take a stroll around the basin and have a warming cup of tea in the cafe.

After the Falkirk Wheel, we made our way up the A82 and drove alongside the western bank of Loch Lomond. The loch is the largest loch in surface area in Scotland, and was made famous by the song "The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond." 🎼 "Y'ell take the high road and I"ll take the low road, and I'll be in Scotland afore ye. But me and my true love will never meet again, on the bonnie, bonnie banks o' Loch Lomand."

It was raining rather heavily when we made a pitstop at this small park.

I would love to see the loch on a sunny day, but the rain did give it an ethereal quality.

From Loch Lomond we continued on the A82 into the foothills and mountains of the Highlands. The scenery, even on a rainy autumn day, is absolutely breathtaking. Our route took us through Glen Coe, arguably Scotland's most famous glen. A glen is a long, narrow valley. Some, like the Great Glen that runs along Loch Ness, are formed by geological fault lines. Others, like Glen Coe, are formed by glaciers. Glen Coe is a u-shaped glen that's about ten miles long and less than half-a-mile wide at its narrowest point.

You definitely find some of Scotland's higher peaks here.

I normally don't take photos from the car when it's raining, but I had to try and capture what I was seeing as we drove along. So please forgive the drops of water on the windows.

Talk about privacy!

We stopped at the Glen Coe visitors' centre for a pitstop and a cup of something warm. I snapped this photo of the glen from the head of one of the walking trails.

This is a model of the area's topography. Glen Coe is the u-shaped bit on the left above "Mor."

A snap of Loch Linnhe

We were passing through Onich near the head of Loch Linnhe when the sun suddenly

erupted from behind the clouds. It was almost magical.

Our next stop was at Neptune's Staircase in Fort William. The staircase is a series of eight locks along the Caledonian Canal. They were built by Thomas Telford during the first quarter of the 19th Century. It takes about ninety minutes for a boat to traverse the entire staircase, which lifts (or lowers) the boat a total of sixty-four feet.

Fort William sits in the shadow of Ben Nevis, the tallest mountain in Great Britain. This is a shot of one of the lesser peaks. I took it because of the weird lines I saw running down the side of it.

The harbor at the top of Neptune's Staircase.

A shot taken from the middle of one of the locks looking down the staircase.

As you can see, the weather was clearing a bit as I tried to find the best way to show the locks.

The emerging sun made photography a bit difficult.

Looking up the staircase just as a rainbow appeared.

One final shot. Despite the appearance of the sun, it began to rain again and we didn't have our coats.

Here's a closer look at those two tracks I saw on the side of the mountain. It turns out that they are part of the hydroelectric plant that powers the aluminium (aluminum to my American readers) plant at the mountain's base. The plant sends its excess energy to the national power grid. How green.