2025-04-15 56 -3

Location

Woods at the end of the Falkirk Wheel parking lot, Camelon, Scotland

Participants

Mcbaneg (talk)
Jessica
Susanne
Jake
Isaac

Plans

Train from Edinburgh to Camelon, walk. Hope to arrive around 4:15 pm.

Expedition

Our old geohashing pals are visiting us for several days, so an expedition was in order. Today's hashpoint was near an interesting tourist attraction and within walking distance of a train station with direct connections to Edinburgh. We made the plan yesterday evening.

The Falkirk Wheel [1] claims to be the world's only rotating boat lift. It's sort of a Ferris wheel for boats, lifting them from the Forth and Clyde Canal at sea level to the Union Canal that runs a few dozen meters higher in altitude. It was built around 2002 as a combination useful device (it replaced 9 defunct locks) and spectacular tourist attraction. We visited it both before and after the hashpoint, which was just past the end of the parking lot.

There's a fine photo [2] at Wikipedia, which I attempted to recreate. I suspect the Wikipedia one was taken from one of the docks in the basin. This was roped off, so I had to take my photo from maybe 4 meters farther back. In addition, in the Wikipedia photo there were no boats at those foreground docks, while when we where there several boats were tied up so you can't see the three docks themselves in the new version. Also, the Wheel was starting to rotate, so it's not quite in the full-upright position as in the Wikipedia photo. Nonetheless I think this attempt satisfies the Sightseeing requirements.

We reached the hashpoint without difficulty. The woods were not hard to move through. As usual the GPS was none too consistent under the tree cover, but I managed to grab a shot with under 2m error shown.

Following the excursion to the hashpoint we went back to the visitor center. A playground incident there resulted in a modest scalp wound to one of our party that bled enough to generate a trip to the local emergency room, and extended the expedition by several hours beyond what we had expected. This incident appears not to qualify us for Trail of Blood, because it didn't prevent us from reaching the hashpoint!