Wednesday 3 September 2008

The Falkirk Wheel

The day after the wedding in Glasgow we were going to visit the newly wed's house in Falkirk and on the way a visit was planed to see the Falkirk Wheel. Now I had never heard of this engineering marvel but I decided to wait until we got there to find out what exactly The Falkirk Wheel was. Well this is it.


In case you still aren't sure it is a high tech canal lock that replaces about 7 or 8 old style locks to join one canal to an other. Once a boat sails in either or both locks the whole thing turns anticlockwise and one moves up and the other moves down. It is so well balanced that it can move hundreds of boats a day for less than £10.00 worth of electricity. It is a pity there aren't two canals in Torbay with a height difference of 65 metres, something like this would be a far better attraction that the balloon and it doesn't need to worry about the wind speed getting above 10 mph. The visitors centre next to it wasn't built or planned when the Wheel was built in 2002, opened by the Queen, but so many people turned up to watch it working the centre went up in double quick time. Boat trips run twice an hour and tend to be fairly full but they do travel a lot slower than Torbays own Catamaran. The swan is happy because there are no notices saying 'Don't feed the swans'.

4 comments:

Dave said...

I have read about this. Brilliant design. - Dave

Lord Hutton said...

Doesnt it tip the water out?

Anonymous said...

No, Stagecoach don't run it. It works perfectly.

Anonymous said...

My granddad was the first non-royal person to use the Wheel.

It can rotate both ways as well ;)