Glascow

We had had two great stops today. The first is called the Falkirk Wheel boat elevator. The repeated circles reminded me of what a post-modernistic Celtic statue might look like. Scotland was re-opening part of the old canal system that transported people and goods in the 18th century. They wanted it to encourage leisure, vacation and tourism. But it wasn’t possible to rebuild the original canal in one critical spot. Everybody knows the Scots are the world’s best engineers. It should be no surprise that they invented the one and only rotating boat elevator in the world.

Falkirk Wheel (from Wikipedia)

Operation is easy to explain. Imagine a large ferris wheel with only two seats — one at the top of the wheel and one at the bottom. Now imagine the seats are barges. Both barges hold 1,000 pounds of water. Assume a 500 pound boat is placed in the upper barge. The boat will displace exactly 500 pounds of water, which will overflow the barge, leaving upper barge with 500 pounds of water and a 500 pound boat. Now imagine a 200 pound boat is placed in the bottom barge, leaving 800 pounds of water and a 200 pound boat. Both barges weigh exactly the same. The wheel is perfectly balanced. You can easily turn the wheel one half turn, moving the 200 pound boat from the lower position to the top, the 500 pound boat to the lower. You can see a movie of the wheel in action here. (This is a time laps movie. It takes 4 minutes for the wheel to rotate.)

Our other stop was Stirling City. Stirling is a modern city with an old town section. There’s plenty of US towns with a similar idea. Only in Europe, “old” means “around 1200 AD”. The old buildings are in immaculate condition. The castle was vital because, thanks to it’s strategic location, it allowed the owner to control all of Scotland. I was looking forward to raiding the castle. Unfortunately, they require timed tickets to enter. Also, I left my grappling hook at home. ;-) Here’s a picture of a pretty spot in old town.

Old town Stirling

In addition to an excellent day of touring, it was also Danita’s birthday. The dinner wait staff sang a congratulations song and gave us a huge piece of birthday cake. The cabin stewards surprised us with a towel birthday cake and a cupcake. Even the captain got involved, signing a birthday card.

All in all, it was a most satisfying day. There are a few more pics on the website.