Today was the day I was to leave Scotland. But before I left, there was one more sight to see: The Falkirk Wheel.
I didn't even attempt to include captions, because it probably would've devolved into a bunch of technical jargon. So, I'll give you the Reader's Digest Condensed Version right here in the post.
Historically, when two waterways come together that are not at the same elevation, a series of locks is built to connect them (such as Neptune's Staircase a couple of days ago, or the Soo Locks here in Michigan), locks being more or less like the water version of steps. Well, in this case, they decided to do something different. The result of that idea is the Falkirk Wheel, which is a technological marvel. It's a rotating boatlift, which is to say that it's almost like a gargantuan ferris wheel; only instead of seats, it has what amounts to two large swimming pools, mounted diametrically opposite each other. The concept is that a small boat would come to the wheel, go into one of these swimming-pool-like chambers, and be raised to the other waterway (or lowered, as the case may be).
So, they have boat tours of this whole trip. You start out on the lower waterway, get raised via the Wheel up to the upper waterway, go through this very old tunnel (built by the Romans), turn around and come back to the bottom. The description of it doesn't make it sound very exciting, but trust me -- it was VERY cool.
You can see the slide show here.
(I'm no longer putting the slide shows inline, I've been told that some computers cannot handle them.)
You can read more about the Falkirk Wheel at:
Wikipedia
and
Undiscovered Scotland
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