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All right, I know it’s been a while. Let’s see if my memory hasn’t failed me yet.

The last time I wrote about my vacation I stopped short of our last leg in Edinburgh. Tuesday came and on we went to do some more touristy stuff.

Our group had seriously decreased in size as some had already left for home. The remaining four of us decided to go and see some of the tourist attractions around Edinburgh. After breakfast, our host and us got into Jeff’s BMW and took to the road. I don’t really recall all that much about the drive as I spent most of it sleeping comfortably in my seat. When we arrived at our first destination, I was told that it was one of the Millenium Projects the UK had built for the year 2000 celebrations.

Scotlands part in the project was the re-opening of the waterway connecting Edinburgh on the west coast with Glasgow on the east coast. What we came to see was the lock system they built do overcome a rather big drop.

I want to detour here for a bit and tell you about some of the other Millenium Project installations you have a fair chance of knowing about: The Millenium Dome and Millenium Wheel (otherwise known as London Eye), both in London. You’ve probably seen the former in one of the more recent James Bond movies and caught glimpses of the latter in TV footage of London.
Both impress with their sheer size, if not necessarily common sense. The Millenium Dome at least seems to be nothing more than a hugely expensive waste of steel and concrete. Supposedly they hired one of the EuroDisneyland managers to make it work economically. What I’m told is that they misunderstood names and hired the EuroDisneyland Parking Lot Manager…
The Wheel though turned into quite an impressive tourist attraction – if you want to take a ride on it, prepare for a few hours of queuing. Or better – get ticket’s online in advance. Now back to the trip -

The lock we visited is called The Falkirk Wheel. It’s an impressive display of very ingenious engineering.

As you can probably see from the pictures, the thing is *huge*. The trick about it way of functioning is that they built two massive bathtubs, big enough to fit in two boats. These are mounted in a turning wheel, thus lifting the totally balanced cargo of boat and water up and down.

This way of building the lock turns out to be quite economical, as only very little energy is necessary to turn the wheel (I was told a 60 Watt electric motor with a transmission was doing the job [hmm?]). Another bonus is that it doesn’t waste water as conventional lock systems do – just look up the Panama canal locks on the internet.

We spent about 90 minutes looking at this thing from all angles, finally getting back into the car and going back to Edinburgh for some food. There was however one small stop to look at a few stones on a field that apparently had been put there by druids centuries ago. It was something of a smaller, non-impressive Stonehenge.

Lunch consisted of the stereotypical British dish: Fish and Chips. The shop we got it from however turned out to be quite ok. It had even been awarded several stars (by the Edinburgh tourist office I understand – I don’t think it’s something on the order of Michelin but a guide nonetheless. Surprisingly enough, there was a rather good collection of Italian wine bottles next to the frying pans, something, I’m sure, that doesn’t exactly fit into the financial range of the students frequeting the place.

The afternoon was spent with some late shopping for our planned road trip to tne northern end of the UK main island. We went into Mark and Spencer’s and Salesbury’s to get sandwiches and other road food.

When we wanted to drive back to the house though, the BMW let us down. A nut holding the transmission gear in place gave out on us and we had to call the AA (Britain’s equivalent to Germany’s ADAC) to get a replacement. Nothing more boring than spending an hour in a big, dark, empty parking lot with temperatures rapidly dropping. As a result, when we got back, we decided to take Ken’s car to drive north, as our confidence in the BMW had decreased along with the temperature.

Next update: A road trip through the Highlands and up to the cliffs.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 1st, 2004 at 10:44 pm and is filed under 2003 - Scotland, journal.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.