I must admit to not being too enamoured with Scottish weather so far! ‘Light rain showers and a moderate breeze’ according to my weather app, and this is the prediction for the next 10 days, with a few thundery showers thrown in to ring the changes.

We left Falkirk in sunshine and made our way to the canal to see the Falkirk Wheel, an extraordinary sight. And of course The Engineer was determined to see it in action, so we waited an hour to watch a narrow boat being transferred from the Union Canal to the Forth and Clyde Canal – in heavy rain! The rest of our walk was easy, following the John Muir Way and the canal towpath, with a diversion for coffee en route. Tomorrow’s forecast ‘Light rain showers and a moderate breeze’!

A Backward Glance

In marriage someone has to make the decisions and the other just do as they’re told. In our marriage I make the final decision, while Carol simply eliminates those leading up to it. Carol is equally obedient, and if I say we’ll have dinner at eight, she will invariably reply “something tells me we should eat at six”, and she always does what it tells her. Today was going to be a special treat for me. I was going to see the ‘Falkirk Wheel’ for the first time. It is a very elegant piece of engineering that works on simple fundamental principles and requires only a small amount of electrical power to operate. But the question I’ve always asked myself has been: if it has a head of water above the axis of rotation, should it need any electric power at all to operate? This would make it more akin to a traditional lock that lift boats several metres without any other energy input except a head of water and someone opening and closing its gates. Anyway, when we arrived it was resting and we learnt from a guy called Josh that we’d need to wait about thirty minutes before it would start doing its thing. It was raining and Carol put her foot down and said, “I’m not standing around in this weather getting wet through waiting for that”. Josh could see my lips quivering and told Carol “you can shelter under the bridge up there and wait”. So Carol did as she was told and we all sheltered together chatting waiting for the moment to arrive. Josh was a trainee paramedic and told us a lot about his experience in the NHS and his views on soaps like ‘Casualty’. When the ‘Wheel’ eventually turned, lifting boats from one canal to another, neither Carol or Josh appeared that impressed but I thought it was very cool – just a pity about the wiring. Watching the event made me think of a floating mass (a boat) moving around in a body of water and the resulting distribution of forces. It’s another of nature’s exquisite balancing acts, which has always fascinated me, but has been of no interest to anyone else, including Carol and Josh. Where’s Archimedes when you need him!