Falkirk, Scotland

Sometimes as you drive along a highway you see a work of art that catches your eye. Those who travel the Eastlink in Melbourne would be familiar with the Bird and Worm, Smarties, and the Hotel.

As we drove on the M9 past Falkirk in Scotland we saw two large horse heads rising above the landscape. These are the Kelpies, shifting spirits that make a monument to the horse powered heritage of Scotland. They form a gateway to the redeveloped Forth and Clyde Canals.

Canals and canal boats criss-cross most of the UK. Before road or rail services, canals formed the most efficient highway for goods to be transported. The limiting factor of a canal is navigating any change of altitude, this requires lochs where the water level can be adjusted and this takes time slowing the trip.

In the 1930’s the Forth and Clyde canals had become disused and sections filled in. Resurgence in using the canals for pleasure craft saw a demand to reopen them. Re-digging the canal would be relatively easy but replacing lochs would be expensive. Why not replace the lochs with a creative, modern solution? The opportunity was taken to build the Falkirk Wheel.

The Falkirk Wheel is on the same canal as the Kelpies. It is a rotating boat lift that replaces a series of eleven lochs and can take one boat up and one boat down 24 metres in a few minutes. It has two arms with a large tub at the end of each. A boat floats into the tub and a water tight door is closed behind it. The arms then rotate taking the still floating boat either up to an extension of the canal or down to the marina below. Once the tub has arrived 180 degrees from its starting point a door is opened at the other end of the tub and the boat floats out.

The inspiration for the design of the Wheel was the double headed Celtic axe.

The Falkirk Wheel is an example of an engineering solution becoming a tourist attraction in its own right.

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