11th February 2012
Falkirk on the Union Canal
Due to the disappointment pf not getting to Aqueduct Marina to see our boat we decided to go & have a look at the Falkirk Wheel.
We felt this might be good to include on the blog as Scotland’s canals don’t join up with England’s (much to the delight of the Scots!) therefore a lot of english boaters won’t get the chance to experience these canals. Unfortunately their canals do not join up together as the English ones do so their system is quite short & disjointed. Today we visited a modern masterpiece of canal engineering The Falkirk Wheel, I felt that the basin & surrounding area where the massive Helix developement is planned is at the moment more of a deliberate commercial enterprise for the general public first rather than a dedicated boaters destination. The main building housed a large coffee shop & gift shop along with the ticket office for the boat trips on the wheel, but boat knick knacks & souvenirs were not very apparent, for example we looked for a brass plague to add to those already on our nb but there was nothing of that type only plenty of Scottish souvenirs.
The Scottish canals will not be forming part of the new Canals & Rivers Trust that we are all currently voting on but will stay under the control of BW Scotland.
The temperature in Falkirk today was around 4c & the higher Union Canal which links Falkirk with Edinburgh was frozen but the lower Forth & Clyde Canal which links Edinburgh with Glasgow was not! The Falkirk Wheel joins these two canals together for the first time. We watched the tour boat go up & down in the wheel & walked a mile or so along the Union Canal, looking at the almost new barely broken in Locks 9 & 10 then at the swans performing a skating routine on the frozen canal. The water although frozen was very clear & made for some awesome ice pattern pictures.
I have put some pictures of the day in a slide show rather than reams of separate images I hope this lets you get the idea of the Falkirk Wheel & you enjoy the skating swans!
We will visit another Scottish canal or marina next time & post some more pictures for you, hopefully in better weather.
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Hi
Maybe if you had walked a little further along the Union Canal (on which the Wheel is built not the F & C) you would have come to the centre of the canal world, Linlithgow, where you would have been able to purchase not only a plaque for the longest aqueduct in Scotland but also for the Falkirk Wheel. You would have also been able to visit the ONLY canal museum in Scotland. We look forward to your visit next year. We are open from Easter to the end of September. Look us up on http://www.lucs.org.uk or Linlithgow Union Canal Society on our webcam. This is the REAL canal visitor attraction, the ONLY green tourism award canal society in the UK and a Queens award for volunteers holder.