Friends have continued to castigate Eye for what they feel is a slur on the Scottish national wonder, the Falkirk Wheel. Summer Gatherers went to see this feat of waterway engineering on their day out at the gathering. We ran a picture caption in the 3 August issue, slightly tongue in cheek at the Wheel's extraordinary appearance, but we see it has offended Scottish sensibilities. So, to make amends, we'd like to tell southern Friends (presumably all those of you in Scotland are familiar with this technological wizardry) a little about the Wheel.
It is a rotating boat lift – the only one of its kind in the world (Cheshire Friends please note this is an improvement on your one) which unites two canals, the Forth & Clyde and the Union. These two canals were connected by eleven locks, but the locks were filled in and built over in the 1930s. Boats are lifted from one canal by the rotating wheel and placed in the other canal in a remarkably short time (five and a half minutes) and with low energy expenditure, a point made in the Wheel's defence by Alison Burnley of Edinburgh. 'The amount of energy used to raise one of the gondolas and get the boat going on up the canal is the same as is used by one light bulb,' she tells us.
However, we mustn’t overlook the cost to build it - £17.5 million. The whole restoration project cost £84 million, although some £32million of that came from Lottery funds.
If you want more technical detail, we recommend you look on the Wikipedia free encyclopaedia site, or at www.falkirkwheel.info