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Published: September 23rd 2011
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Today is our last day in Scotland and another chapter in our adventure will soon come to a close. Today finds us in Falkirk on a drizzly morning on our way to the famous Falkirk Wheel. This ingenious Scottish invention was developed to enable boats to use the Firth and Clyde, and Union canals without using traditional locks to lift them the 35 metre difference in level.
We arrived at The Wheel just in time to buy our tickets and board the next tour boat. It was full of older local people on a day’s bus tour. As we started our boat trip we overheard one elderly lady say, “I thought we were only coming to see The Wheel, not ride it”. We had the usual safety message which mentioned there was no point in looking for life jackets because there weren’t any. If we started to sink just lift your feet and the boat will settle on the bottom with just a small amount of water filling the boat. The boat moved into The Wheel and then we started to go up as if we were on a Ferris wheel. It was an amazing feeling to be raised quietly and
sedately to the level of the aqueduct above us. The short ride through a 180 metre tunnel, a quick turn around and return journey seemed quicker than the 50 minutes it took. The drizzle outside spoilt any photo taking but the ride was memorable. How much does it cost to take your boat on The Wheel? Nothing! Perhaps this is the seed of another adventure; canal boating in Scotland.
Our destination today is south of the border near Carlisle. To get there we took some secondary roads that meandered their way through the Scottish Border District. We stopped for coffee at a very enjoyable little cafe in the town of Biggar. We would strongly recommend this cafe to all travellers. It is run by the local church in the main street of the town and provides wonderful home baking provided by the ladies of the parish. It was great chatting with the ladies behind the counter about the weather, the Scottish money, and the delicious food. We had visited the same cafe on a previous trip in 2008 and we just had to stop once again. The second visit was as good as the first.
Driving along the M74 we
made a brief detour at Lockerbie, the site of a terrible act of terrorism on 21 December 1988. What it must have been like for the people in this quiet Scottish town on that night we cannot imagine. Our thoughts were with the families who lost loved ones on that night as we walked through the Garden of Remembrance.
It will be a quiet night tonight with an in-room dinner purchased from the local M & S shop. The body needs a rest from a steady supply of Full Scottish breakfasts and delicious roast dinners. Tomorrow night’s accommodation is not far down the motorway but we have a lot to fit in so it’s an early night tonight and an early start tomorrow.
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