Scottish engineering does it again!

Saturday we visited the Falkirk wheel. This was something we have been looking forward to for some time. It was closed when we arrived in Scotland, and has been open for a couple of months now. We decided that we were going, rain or shine. The weather chose rain.

Falkirk Wheel. Boat entering lower gondola

We invited our new mission president, Pres Macdonald and his wife and daughter to go with us and we hope that a good time was had by all. Having invited people to accompany us, we instantly felt responsible for the general jollification, and our instinctive reaction was to bring food with us. We took along home-made Eccles cakes and apples and pears. Eccles cakes are utterly delicious and not in the least healthy, so we hoped the fruit would somehow cancel out the effects of the pastries.

 Have you ever had Eccles cakes? We discovered them when we were in the Lake District in 2012, and from that time onward have purchased them whenever and wherever they have been available for purchase. We found some good ones on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. Sadly, they are not available in Provo, so I even resorted to making them a few times. And seeing as this involved making puff pastry from scratch, this was no mean feat. Scotland is, however a delightfully civilized place and one can pick up pre-made, pre-rolled-out puff pastry at a very reasonable price in any grocer's fridge, right next to the margarine and other spreads. And therein lies the rub. Most of the puff pastry we have found is made with margarine,(and tastes just fine, I may add), but by dint of diligent searching we able to find some made with butter (and which tastes much better than just fine) at the big Sainsbury's near Costco.

The Eccles cake is made by putting a filling made of dried currants, candied orange peel, butter, brown sugar and assorted spices onto a little square of puff pastry and then gathering all the edges together like a dumpling. Then you flip it over and flatten it until you can just see the currants through the pastry, and then apply eggwash and a sprinkle of turbinado-type sugar. Cut a couple of small slits in the top and bake in a hot oven until golden brown and crispy. Allow to cool a bit before eating or your mouth will be sorry. We made small ones, about 2 to 2.5 inches across, and they were rather pleasant.

View from the top, sailing out

Enough of the snacks. let's tell you about the wheel. About the year 2000, one of the ways the British decided to spiff up their country was by cleaning up and reopening the system of canals than run all over the country and used to be the main trade shipment route. Scotland has a few of these. One, the Forth-Clyde canal, runs across the country from Edinburgh and the Firth of Forth in the East to Glasgow and the River Clyde over towards the west. Thus one can travel across the country from East to West and back again on water. There is another canal, the Union canal, which runs between Falkirk and Edinburgh. Now the country side through which these canals travel is flattish, but not entirely flat. Boats and barges do have to change elevation from time to time, and this had always been done by using a series of locks. The boat will enter the lock chamber at one end. Water will either be pumped into the chamber to raise the boat up, or out of the chamber to drop the boat down, and then it will float out at a different level, onto the next section of the canal. The trickiest part of the canal system is near Falkirk, and there used to be a series of 11 locks in a row, to manoeuvre the canal traffic up or down the 35 metre hill beween the two canals. At perhaps an hour per lock, and the expenditure of a tremendous amount of water, this was an expensive bottleneck in the whole system. Enter 21st century Scottish engineering.

The Falkirk wheel is a mighty axle, around which a giant wheel (Think of a water wheel with only two water receptacles, opposite each other. Now imagine the whole thing oversized, made of concrete and the receptacles are giant gondolas, each capable of holding a large barge,) turns through 180 degrees every time some one pushes the power button. The barge floats into the gondola, and then is slowly lifted up or down to the other level, and floats out there. The trick to it is, the two gondolas are exactly the same weight, whether they contain just water, or water and a barge. The amount of water is automatically adjusted by the weight of the barge floating in. The whole area around the wheel is a celebration of good ol' Archimedes and his 'Eureka' moment in the bathtub.

Man-powered Archimedes Screw

It therefore takes very little energy to lift or lower a barge, because the whole system is in perfect balance, and all that is needed is to overcome inertia. It takes no extra energy to keep the gondolas level. Each half circuit of the wheel, raising or lowering one or two barges, costs about 60 US cents in power.
The system has been running for about 14 years now and is mostly used for pleasure boats. They make all their money out of tourists, who pay a great deal more than 60 cent apiece for the  privilege on riding the system. Real-live barge owners and operators get to ride on the wheel for free. And if that sounds bitter, it isn't. The whole ride and associated commentary were terrific and worth every pound.

We also visited the local water park next to the wheel and spun an Archimedes screw to pump a little water uphill.

After the wheel we paid a return visit to the Kelpies to make sure they hadn't galloped off into the mist. We are pleased to report they are still there. We were hosted by a different tour guide this time. She wasn't as eloquent a story teller as Andy, but she did tell us how the town of Falkirk had benefitted from all the tourist traffic, and how it was paying for libraries parks and other community amenities, to which I say, "Right on!". I am pleased to think my few tourist dollars get put to such a good purpose.

Head down Kelpie, Duke

Also who could not be pleased to have another look at the handsome Duke, representing the working power of thousands of Clydesdale horses from the 19th century that powered the barges and industries of the golden era of Scottish engineering. These are the animals that gave the term 'horsepower' its real meaning. Also it is not a random coincidence that the competent engineer in the early Star Trek series was Scotty.

Finally, on our way back to the car we discovered a pair of swans and their cygnets had taken possession of the footpath. The grey and downy cygnets clustered together on the path, looking far less elegant and sophisticated than their sleek and white parents. This gives a degree of depth to the classic story of the ugly duckling. The swans didn't care about the people--unless they wanted to walk too close. Then there was hissing, pecking and threatening.



Everybody patiently took a long detour, with little girls pushing their bicycles down the slope and then back up again. although it was quite inconvenient. Louise had the bright idea of taking off her raincoat and holding it between her and the pecking swan. The swan did threaten the raincoat most fearsomely but did not get close to legs or other body parts.