A late start as I delayed leaving the breakfast table at No 54 while Bill, my host, entertained myself and the other guests with topics as diverse as transporting coal from Falkirk to the Auld Reekie, and early video conferencing, while Pat plied us with multiple homemade jams. Once on my way the canal took me by some locks to a tunnel leading to the "Falkirk Wheel". The "Wheel" is a device for lifting boats from the Forth & Clyde canal to the Union canal (and vice versa). Those responsible for this project were evidently aiming for an artistic, elegant effect rather than something purely functional. For example the lights in the tunnel were lines of LEDs of constantly changing colours. As the canal left the tunnel it went onto a raised section through a series of rings. The wheel itself had two tanks of water to carry the barges, on opposite sides of the wheel. As one moved up the other moved down. A sign said that the power required was equivalent to eight kettles. To achieve this I reasoned that the tanks must be equal in weight to balance each other. Then I wondered if only one contained a barge, would their weights be different? However if the water level was the same, the barge would simply displace an equivalent weight of water, making both tanks the same weight. I then moved on to thinking about cog sizes and the small force the motor would need to provide assuming it drove a small cog, which turned a much larger cog. After all that thought I headed off following signs for the Antonine Wall. I found it by mounds forming the outline of a Roman fort. The Antonine Wall was once the northern limit of the Roman empire, although not for very long. I followed it a little way. It consists of grass covered banks and a ditch crossing the countryside. Once spanning Scotland from the Clyde to the Forth, this was the best preserved section I had seen. I was reminded of the map of Roman Britain I had stuck to my bedroom wall as a youth (while others at my school had pictures of rock stars)!
From then on, for much if the day, it was a hike along the Forth & Clyde canal on the tarmac towpath. I saw only one boat in motion, and two people on paddle boards, one with a small dog as a passenger. However there were plenty of people on the towpath; walkers, some with dogs, and cyclists (one of whom had a small, fluffy white dog in his backpack)! Single cyclists were generally polite, some even saying thank you when I moved out the way, but groups of cyclists seemed to ignore me, travelling two abreast at speed, absorbed with themselves, talking to each other and forcing me into the vegetation at the side to avoid them. On the tarmac of the towpath a Rangers football club supporter had sprayed slanderous comments about their rivals Celtic.
A swan flew down the canal low over the water, its wings almost touching those of its reflection. A heron landed on a branch on the opposite side of the river. A small aircraft droned above me in noisy, wide circles. The day slipped by as I plodded on. I refreshed myself twice with coffee at different outlets and thus fortified reached Kirkintulloch. At the town I finally left the canal and joined a path along an old, tree lined railway line. At the long defunct station at Milton of Campsie I turned into the village walking the final distance to my hotel.
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