Falkirk Wheel: The wheel deal

IN the decade since the Falkirk Wheel opened, its great metal fangs have become one of the most recognisable tourist sights in Scotland.

We had visited it once before many years ago, but Ellen was too young to remember, so we scooped up her friend Julia and set off to reacquaint ourselves with this extraordinary piece of engineering.

We all trooped aboard the barge and as we slowly filtered into the section that would raise us up to the higher level where the Union canal meets the Forth & Clyde canal – some 24 metres above where barge people used to have the laborious trial of going through 11 locks – I remembered that I’m not very good at heights. However, the mechanism is incredibly smooth and gentle and if you weren’t looking out the window seeing the earth slip away, you wouldn’t even know that you were moving. Despite raising two large boats all this way out of the water, the wheel uses a tiny amount of energy – all down to Mr Euripedes who worked out the theory of water displacement one afternoon when he didn’t have anything else in his diary.

There is a captain who fed us all sorts of information during the journey, accompanied by the mellifluous tones of Bill Paterson on the audio visual film shown on the screens above our heads. The girls were not particularly interested in listening to him, but did get rather excited when they thought they had spotted a dead frog. As they scrambled for their cameras its legs started to move and their morbid little minds wandered elsewhere. Alongside the canal on the higher level is the pathway where the horses once pulled the barges carrying coal and other commodities to Glasgow. Our boat travelled so serenely that the Saturday walkers easily overtook us.

The views from the top are quite amazing – to one side are the industrial lands of central Scotland and to the other you can see the Bens Lomond and Ledi. On the return leg we encountered a couple of swans, uncertain whether or not to travel down with us as their nests are on the lower level.

After disembarking we watched the next barge be raised up and oddly enough that seemed to impress the girls, when they realised how high they had actually been.I doubt that they’ll remember anything about Euripedes though.

• The Falkirk Wheel is open seven days from 10am-5:30pm, boat ride prices are: adults, £7.95; concessions, £6.95; children, £4.95, see www.thefalkirk wheel.co.uk for more