The Falkirk Wheel

A visit today with H to the Falkirk Wheel. She was astonished at how busy it was. They had visited 8 years ago. It was all fairly low key. There was just a small car park on the other side of the canal, a much smaller visitor centre, a few people, and an open topped boat taking people between the canals using the Wheel. It is now a major tourist attraction, a big access road, lots of parking for all sizes of vehicle, a much enlarged visitor centre, and a rather bizarre pink enclosed boat with “awe inspiring” and “ unique” emblazoned on the side which takes visitors between the levels (extra, an experience we skipped). It had the feel of a very slow circus ride.

I now understand a lot more about the Wheel’s context. It is a key part of a huge project which has seen the disused, derelict and disconnected Forth and Clyde and Union Canals restored and connected for the first time in 70 years. The system is operated by Scottish Canals, the successor to British Waterways in Scotland, and which remains an agency of (the Scottish) government. Very different to England where government divested responsibility for the canal system to a specially created charity, the Canals and Rivers Trust. I am learning that devolution has resulted in the Scots doing things differently to the English in a number of areas. The water industry is not privatised, there are no tuition fees to Universities, prescriptions are free etc.

Extra - the Kelpies, just a few miles down the canal, which we visited next. Sitting in the newly created Helix Park, I hadn’t appreciated this was also part of the canal system. It’s another new, big tourist attraction, which H had only seen from the M8 motorway.