The Falkirk Wheel.

It was a cycle run to the Falkirk Wheel today, the leader was in a bad mood - he had recently fallen off his bike while travelling at walking pace and landed on his head - without as much as a strand of hair for protection; even worse, her indoors was now making him wear a helmet. He lead a hard pace and was taking no prisoners.

Just before lunch, I picked up a hawthorn in the left tyre. Normally I like the shrub/tree, the flowers are delightful and the haws look nice, but a quarter of an inch of spike in a tyre is a different matter.
Cycle tyres come in two varieties: those that rarely puncture and those that are easy to remove from the wheel; I look forward to the day when some inventor manages to combine those properties. Mine are the puncture resistant variety. Effecting a repair was hard work.

I had to hurry home from lunch as I had a meeting this evening so: a quick lunch, a quick ice-cream, a quick blip of the wheel followed by a hard ride with the hope that I wasn't delayed by another puncture.

The wheel is a boat lift that replaces nine locks between the Forth and Clyde Canal and the Union Canal, it raises the boats by eighty feet while a further two locks cope with the remaining thirty six feet. Most of the locks ceased functioning in the 1930s and the wheel opened in 2002, its main function being as a tourist attraction.
The bold lines invite you to take photographs but the results are somewhat lacking; it's virtually impossible to produce a satisfying composition - hence the treatment I have used here.