Falkirk & Dunnotar Castle

We were on the move again the next day, this time to Ballater in the Cairngorms but first there were a couple of things we wanted to see en-route.

The first was the “Kelpies” – not the Australian dogs – but 30-metre-high horse-head sculptures which are really amazing. Not quite so amazing is the legend of the Kelpies – see here.

The next stop was the Falkirk Wheel, which predictably but disappointingly wasn’t in operation whilst we were there. Still an amazing feat of engineering.

In brief, it is a boat “lift” transporting boats from one canal, down to the next one. Something that used to take 11 locks and an entire day to navigate.
The stats are:
It cost £84.5million to build
The world’s first and only rotating boat lift
Rotates 180° in under 5 mins
1,200 tonnes of steel used to create it
Over 1,000 construction staff to build it
Powered using the energy equivalent to 8 kettles
Has 14,868 hand tightened bolts (you would not catch me on there!)

Or for any engineering (or other) geeks … you can read all about it here.

Back on the road for a few hours to take a look at Dunnotar Castle before stopping in Ballater for the night. We drove through some lovely scenery today, rolling hills and beautiful Autumn leaf trees.

Our hotel is in a very quaint village and a lovely old hotel, complete with wood-burning fires in the lounge. As we’d had a long day on the road, we had dinner at the hotel where I learnt that “Balmoral Chicken” means “chicken stuffed with Haggis and served with whiskey sauce”. The menu mentioned the latter (which was delicious) but failed to mention the former. Anyway, there was only a small amount of Haggis and we had intended trying it at some point, so no lasting damage 🙂 It was quite peppery in flavour and not really unpleasant but the knowledge of what it is made from still puts me off having it again 🙂