Two friends and I met at the station in time to get the 11am Falkirk train. This was made more complicated than it needed to be by the fact that most of the ticket machines weren't working and the one that was wouldn't accept an English note. Possibly because it's not legal tender, but probably because it was very battered.
We made it onto the train and were dismayed to find that many of the bike spaces (on alternate carriages) were filled with baby buggies, so we made our way to the last carriage to find there was already a bike in the space. So Colin and I put ours in with it and Wes wedged his in the doorway on the side of the train that wouldn't be used. We set off. At a later stop, more people got on with more bikes. Things continued. Then we got to Polmont and a conductor type bloke got on and threw a fit at the number of bikes on the train and told us we'd all have to get off except 2 bikes. Someone in a wheelchair wanted to get on, which of course is fair enough, but it seemed that the only possible place for her to go was in our carriage, and obviously it was not possible to make space for her or for the excess bikes in any of the other 3 carriages with bike and wheelchair spaces, or the 4 carriages with just wheelchair spaces. Clearly people should not have to move their baby buggies from the bike spaces. I don't know why we even thought that would be an option.
So, we got off at Polmont and cycled the 5 miles to the Wheel.
Between Falkirk and Polmont is a tunnel cut out of the hillside. It's nearly 700 metres long and it's very dark. The rock walls are reflected in the water below
and stalactites cling to the roof.
The back of the Wheel.
Ready for action
It's huge!
Let the rotation begin!
It goes a long way back into the hillside
As we sat around on the grass eating our lunch, a woman came and asked us if we wanted to have a wee trip on the inflatable boat around the canal basin, so of course we said yes. I didn't get any pics of the boat, but it was orange, inflatable and had a giant cardboard puffin. As the boat driver drove us around a man on the bank took photos of us, and we all looked and pointed in different directions at once for a laugh. We reassured the other passengers that it didn't matter if the boat got a puncture because we had a puncture repair kit with us. The woman told us that the pictures would be used for canals and waterways magazines, so look out for us. I am hoping that we will appear as a guest publication in the missing words round on HIGNFY. Then we weren't allowed to get out of the boat where we had got on so we had to go down in the lock, which was exciting for people who had never been in a lock before, but many of my school trips took place on canals, so I was quite blasé about it. The other visitors were watching us as if they'd never seen anything so exciting in their whole lives.
Eventually they let us out of the boat and we went for a look at the gift shop. Oh my! So much Falkirk Wheel memorabilia - mugs, piggybanks, plates, little tiny plates no use to anyone, ashtrays, whisky, decanters, glasses, tea-towels, it was like a special Falkirk Wheel Generation Game conveyor belt.
And then we cycled back into a headwind and it took us 4 hours. *sleepy and sore-arsed*
