Day 14 - July 25, 2022 - Edinburgh - Falkirk Wheel

Before todays blog, I have a couple more comments about yesterday.  While in the Scottish National Museum, we decided to take the elevator from the 2nd to 3rd floor.  We entered, pressed the button for 3.  I can't remember the exact sequences of events but we were taken to the 5th floor and it announced floor 1.  The door would not open.  We pressed 3 again and were taken to the 1st floor and the door would not open.  Pressed it again and we were taken back to the 5th floor and the door still would not open.  At this point mild panic was beginning to set in.  Once more we pressed 3 and were returned to the 3rd floor and the door did finally open.  It was one crazy elevator ride.

The other observation I wanted to make was the Scots LOVE their dogs.  Dogs are everywhere, and I don't mean running loose, they are almost always on a leash and well behaved.  Of course there a lot of Scotties and other small dogs, but a variety of large dogs as well.  In yesterday's post I showed the dog cemetery at the castle.  It has been in existence since at least 1840.  Every regiment had a dog mascot and they were buried with honor.  

The cemetery is referenced in this verse from the Scottish Bard, Robert Burns:

“Berkin dugs here lie at rest

The yappin worst, obedient best

Sodgers pets and mascots tae

Still the guard the castle to this day”

Another Edinburgh dog story is that of Greyfriars Bobby:

The best-known version of the story is that Bobby belonged to John Gray, who worked for the Edinburgh City Police as a nigh watchman. When John Gray died he was buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard, the kirkyard surrounding Greyfriars Kirk in the Old Town of Edinburgh. Bobby then became known locally, spending the rest of his life sitting on his master's grave.

In 1867 the lord provost of Edinburgh, Sir William Chambers, who was also a director of the Scottish Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, paid for Bobby's license and gave the dog a collar, now in the Museum of Edinburgh.

Bobby is said to have sat by the grave for 14 years.  He died in 1872  and a necropsy by Prof Thomas Walley of the Edinburgh Veterinary College concluded he had died from cancer of the jaw.

He was buried just inside the gate of Greyfriars Kirkyard, not far from John Gray's grave.

A year later, the English philanthropist Lady Burdett-Coutts was charmed by the story and had a drinking fountain topped with Bobby's statue (commissioned from the sculptor William Brodie) erected at the junction of George IV Bridge and Candlemaker Row (opposite the entrance to the churchyard) to commemorate him.

Bobby's grave in the Greyfriars Kirk.  The sticks have been left for Bobby (instead of flowers).

As we passed the Greyfriars Kirk again yesterday, Sunday, there was a crowd of people on the sidewalk and spilling into the street.  We then noticed that they all had small dogs!  I don't know what it was, but it was obviously some type of gathering of dog lovers to honor Bobby.

As I said, the SCOTS DO LOVE THEIR DOGS.

After breakfast this morning, we left at 8:30 for a 45 minute ride north to Falkirk.  This small town is home to the Falkirk Wheel.  I mentioned the Wheel in yesterdays post.  Honestly, I could not envision the wheel by reading about it.  In fact, even after riding on the wheel, it was still not apparent how it operated until watching it in action from the ground.  Since we were the first to use the wheel this morning I had to wait until we returned to do the observation.

The following is an excerpt from the www.visitfalkirk.com website.

"The Falkirk Wheel is a magnificent, mechanical marvel which has been constructed to 21st century, state-of-the-art engineering. It is already being recognized as an iconic landmark worthy of Scotland's traditional engineering expertise.

Designed to replace a series of lock gates built in the 19th century - long since demolished and replaced by housing - The Falkirk Wheel is the showpiece of the Millennium Link project where coast-to-coast navigation of the canals has been re-established for the first time in over 40 years. This fabulous journey was showcased on the very popular TV series Great Canal Journeys, with Timothy West and Prunella Scales."

Here is where we enter the barge.

The following technical details are from Wikipedia.  If these don't interest you, just skip to the next photo.

Construction

In March 1999 Donald Dewar, the Secretary of State for Scotland, cut the first sod of turf to begin work at lock 31 on the Forth and Clyde Canal. Over 1000 people were employed in the construction of the wheel, which has been designed to last for at least 120 years.

The wheel was fully constructed and assembled at the Butterley Engineering plant in Ripley, Derbyshire. The structure was then dismantled in the summer of 2001, and transported on 35 lorry loads to Falkirk, before being reassembled into five sections on the ground and lifted into place. Construction of the canal required 250,000 m³ (8,800,000 cu ft) of excavation, a 160 m (520 ft) canal tunnel of 8 m (26 ft) diameter, aqueducts of 20 m (66 ft) and 120 m (390 ft), three sets of locks and a number of bridges, as well as 600 m (2,000 ft) of access roads. The 180 m (590 ft) Rough Castle Tunnel was driven in three stages, with the two upper quarters being drilled with a standard excavator before the lower half was dug using a modified road planer in 100 mm (4 in) layers. This technique was 15% cheaper and reduced the build time of the tunnel by two weeks.

Technical considerations

The construction of the basin

The ground on which the wheel is built was previously used as an open cast fire clay mine, a coal mine, and a tar works, resulting in contamination of the canal with tar and mercury. Twenty metres (66 ft) of loosely packed backfill from the mining operations containing large sandstone boulders was not considered adequately solid foundation for the size of the structure, so deep foundations with thirty 22 m (72 ft) concrete piles socketed onto the bedrock were used.

Due to the changing load as the wheel rotates in alternating directions, some sections experience total stress reversals. In order to avoid fatigue that could lead to cracks, sections were bolted rather than welded, using over 14,000 bolts and 45,000 bolt holes.

The aqueduct, engineered by Arup, was originally described as "unbuildable", but was eventually realised using 40 mm (1.6 in) rebar. The original plans also showed the canal being built straight through the Antonine Wall, but this was changed after a petition in favour of two locks and a tunnel under the wall.

I haven't mentioned it before, but the Antonine Wall is a lesser known Roman wall than the Hadrian Wall,  the Antoine Wall constructed in 143 AD runs across Scotland from Edinburgh to Glasgow and is constructed of mounds of earth upon stone foundations instead of rock walls like the Hadrian Wall.

In the above photo the Antonine Wall is on the right and the tunnel passes thru the wall.  It probably isn't what you would expect a "wall" to be.

In some places it looks like this. (stock photo)

Going UP!

Simply put, the wheel works on Archimedes' Principle of water displacement.  The two pools on the wheel counterbalance each other and only a tiny amount of energy is required to raise and lower the wheel, 8 electric teakettles equivalent.

We have left the Wheel and entering the tunnel.

Refinery in the distance viewed from the top.

In the tunnel

Headed back to the Wheel.

Re-entering the Wheel at the top.

Parked in the Wheel at the top.

Going Down.

Here you can barely see the other barge on the way up as we go down.

We have exited the Wheel

The next photos show the wheel in use as viewed from ground level.

Next, we make a 15 minute trip to Helix park where we saw the Kelpies.

The Kelpies, located in Falkirk, Scotland tower about 100 feet above the Forth and Clyde Canal and form a dramatic gateway to the canal entrance on the East Coast of Scotland. Created by Scotland's leading sculptor Andy Scott, The Kelpies are a monument to horse powered heritage across Central Scotland. 

Key facts

• Each structure contains approximately 18,000 individual pieces 
• There is over 1.5 miles of steel in each structure
• They each weigh over 300 ton and sit on 1,200 ton foundations
• Each structure has 464 steel plates 
• In a monumental feat of engineering, The Kelpies rose from the ground in just 90 days, in late 2013.

The walk back to the parking lot was along the canal.  A lot of people in Scotland live in a longboat on one of the numerous canals which stretch across Scotland.  By doing this, you can avoid taxes.

This is a normal lock on a canal in Scotland.  They generally rise only a few feet to a new level, thus there a lot of locks if you cross the country.

A closer view of a lock.  This one was probably about 12 feet high.

We arrived back in Edinburgh around 1:30 and it was raining pretty hard.  Our plan had been to hike up Calton Hill, but the weather was too bad.  We decided we would attempt this when we return here next Saturday.

Instead of the hike up the hill, we hiked about half a block up the street to a food mall where we decided to have lunch at at Weatherspoon.  This is a chain pub-restaurant, very popular in the U.K.  After lunch the rain had slowed substantially and we walked farther up the street to a shopping mall.  Janet needed to acquire some luggage straps, her luggage had been damaged by the airline handling.

After we arrived I worked on the blog until time for our farewell dinner which was at 6:00 PM.  We were having it in the hotel and early because most of us have to be up around 3:30 AM in the morning to fly to the Shetland Islands. 

Until tomorrow from the Shetland Islands...