kirkcudbright | scotland, part 2

Again, you can click through the pictures.

The Falkirk Wheel, "the world's first and only rotating boat lift", connects the Forth & Clyde Canal (bottom) with the Union Canal (top). It replaces a series of 11 locks, which, it must be admitted, had been unused since 1933 and long since buried. This is just an amazing piece of engineering, fascinating to watch. You can pay £8 to go up in it, but the trip is anticlimactically short - the boat exits into the viaduct, goes through a tunnel, and immediately runs into a series of two locks, so it turns around and goes back.

The Union Canal is otherwise a contour canal, following the 240 ft contour line for 33 miles. The tunnel and the locks (the only locks on the Union Canal) were a practical necessity, since bringing the viaduct out at contour level would have meant a) cutting through the Antonine Wall (the furthest frontier in Roman control of Britain), and b) passing over an active rail line.

The canals were built for commercial transport in the late 1700's, but the refurbished canals (and the boat lift) are almost entirely for pleasure craft. According to the tour guide, they had exactly one commercial boat pass through the lift since it opened in 2002. A barge full of road-building material went from Edinburgh to Glasgow, and back again, just to make sure it could be done.

In Aberfoyle, there's a hill known as Doon Hill, or the Fairy Knowe. Up at the tippy top is the Fairy Tree, said to be home of the "People of Quietness". It's also where Reverend Robert Kirk met an untimely death in 1692, a year after writing the fairy tell-all Secret Commonwealth. In tradition, his spirit was actually spirited away to fairyland, where it has languished (or partied) ever since.

It's also a local tradition to write prayers, wishes, or other messages to the fairies on strips of cloth, and tie them to the tree. This is not the actual Fairy Tree, but a nearby fairy franchise tree. We saw a similar thing, later in the trip, at the Clootie Well, a "cloot" being a rag or piece of cloth.