Travels round Scotland... (cont) 

 Mostly, these will be the ongoing journeys of a retired Scot on a mission to learn more about his Homeland. With my long-term Boss (Mrs Wullie), I'll be discovering as much of the Mainland and Islands as we can manage.

 I'll be adding some recent journeys, with plenty of photographs to add interest, and with wee bits about the places, people, history, geography, wildlife, etc. etc. wherever we find ourselves.

  For this will not be an organised tour of our Land; rather, a spur-of-the-moment; let's-go-to-wherever; we've never been to such-and-such, so come on; so-&-so said that place was grand, so we'll have a look ... -type of journal.

I f you're interested, feel free to comment; if you have your own experiences, good or bad, about a place - use our Scot-Talk section to tell the world in a blog. It all helps towards a greater knowledge of Scotland, for those who would like to know it better.

And if you have any queries I may be able to help with, ask the question.

  ...contact us at info@finditinscotland.com

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    (The website logo shows the Forth Bridge (rail) with the Kingdom of Fife across the water, from the wee harbour of South Queensferry north-west of Edinburgh. )

The Falkirk Wheel – the world’s first and only rotating boat lift – was built to link the Forth and Clyde Canal and the Union Canal, which runs 35m (115ft) above. Originally, these canals had been joined at Falkirk by a flight of 11 locks covering a distance of 1.5km, but these has been dismantled in 1933, breaking the link.

 The Falkirk Wheel lies at the end of a reinforced concrete aqueduct that connects, via the Roughcastle tunnel and a double staircase lock, to the Union Canal. Boats entering the Wheel’s upper gondola are lowered, along with the water that they float in, to the basin below. At the same time, an equal weight rises up, lifted in the other gondola. This works on the Archimedes principle of displacement. That is, the mass of the boat sailing into the gondola will displace an exactly proportional volume of water so that the final combination of ‘boat plus water’ balances the original total mass.

Each gondola runs on small wheels that fit into a single curved rail fixed on the inner edge of the opening on each arm. In theory, this should be sufficient to ensure that they always remain horizontal, but any friction or sudden movement could cause the gondola to stick or tilt. To ensure that this could never happen and that the water and boats always remain perfectly level throughout the whole cycle, a series of linked cogs acts as a back up. 

Hidden at each end, behind the arm nearest the aqueduct, are two 8m diameter cogs to which one end of each gondola is attached. A third, exactly equivalent sized cog is in the centre, attached to the main fixed upright. Two smaller cogs are fitted in the spaces between, with each cog having teeth that fit into the adjacent cog and push against each other, turning around the one fixed central one. The two gondolas, being attached to the outer cogs, will therefore turn at precisely the same speed, but in the opposite direction to the Wheel.

 

  Wullie went tae Fife... (with slideshow)