The Falkirk Wheel

On our way back to Edinburgh airport to return Nell, we went on a small nature walk, and then stopped by the Falkirk wheel for a boat-tour of a marvel of modern engineering.

The Falkirk wheel is . . . well, it's basically a boat elevator.

It replaces something like 9 traditional locks that were once required to move passenger and cargo boats across Scotland via series of inland canals. 

All those locks existed to to help move boats through a roughly 30 meter elevation change.

Navigating those locks used to take most of a day.

Now there are just two, one above, and one below, the Falkirk wheel.

The wheel itself cycles in just 5 minutes, and it runs on the energy required to boil about 8 kettles of tea.  The rest of the energy required is potential energy provided by the water flowing into the system, and the offset weight between each of the wheel's two gondolas.  It's pretty ingenious.

These people are starting to feel better after their ordeal.

It really is a very precise piece of machinery.

We grabbed a snack at the tourism information center and then hopped aboard a small diesel motored tourboat for a quick ride up the wheel, through a small tunnel (where we learned a bit about the Antonine wall, which I didn't know anything about prior to this tour), and then back through the tunnel and down again.

 

There was some delightfully weird statuary on hand. 

It was a really neat tour, and the views from the top of the wheel were pretty incredible, as it was a fairly clear day -- we could see almost all the way to Edinburgh proper.

It was also nice to be on a boat that didn't do anything too exciting.

 

Tour of an engineering marvel behind us, we zipped onward to the airport, returned Nell, and boarded a tram headed into Edinburgh.