Archimedes Principle

This is the Falkirk Wheel built to reconnect the Clyde and Forth canal with the Union Canal.

The original connection was by 11 locks which fell into disrepair many years ago and the original site has now been built on, so they couldn't be rebuilt. It used to take 12 hours to get up the 11 locks but this takes 4 minutes.

You can take a ride, on it as we did, in passenger barges. Ours was called Antonine as this is also the site of the Antonine Wall.

Here you can see the wheel starting to lift the barge up and at the same time the opposite side starts to come down. I can't go into all the technical details but I'm sure you could find them if you looked up the web site for the Falkirk Wheel.

We just stopped over here en route home, having heard about the wheel on our West Highland train journey last year.