LEJOG Day 71: Falkirk to Kilsyth

Weather: Partly cloudy with fresh westerly and showers

Distance covered today: 22.7km (14.1mi)

Last night's B&B: Cladhan Hotel (£55)

Cumulative distance: 1426.3km (886.3mi)/ % Complete: 74.5%

GPS satellite track of today's route: Day 71 (click!)

You know the feeling. You reach into your pocket for something important and it isn’t there. There follows a frantic but fruitless search in all other pockets, and then that sinking feeling as you realise it just isn’t anywhere. It happened to me the other day in a shop when I reached for my wallet. Nothing! Eventually, I found it under my arm where I had obviously put it while trying to juggle walking poles and purchases. This morning, it was my camera, and this time, I just couldn’t understand its absence. I had checked the room thoroughly before leaving. Could I have left it in the pub last night? I had no alternative but to turn around and go back to the hotel, about twenty minutes away. Apparently, it had been mixed up in the bed-cover which I had folded up on going to sleep last night. They had already found it and they handed it over to me with a flourish! Phew!!

Given that I have reduced my possessions to the absolute minimum, I am constantly having to be on my guard that I don’t lose something vital and my general track record of being completely absent-minded isn’t helping. For instance, I have seven cables/chargers for my various electronic bits and pieces. The electrical sockets are often concealed under the bed or in a cupboard, so I could easily forget one. I routinely count each one into a Stuffit bag every morning. I have a host of similar tricks of my new trade, and until this morning, they seemed to be working! I will have to be even more vigilant in future!

After the early excitement, my stroll along the Union Canal continued, with considerably greater interest than before. Finding the canal was itself a challenge. It disappeared into a tunnel beneath Falkirk and I walked right over it, fortunately seeing a sign-post before I had gone too far! I then passed the very first lock that I have encountered all the way from Edinburgh, only to encounter a second tunnel and then the famous “Falkirk Wheel”. This amazing civil engineering contraption physically lifts narrow-boats 35 metres (115 ft.) from the Forth and Clyde Canal to the Union Canal, so that narrow-boats can make the trip all the way from Edinburgh to Glasgow. Originally the canals were connected by 11 locks through Falkirk, but these fell into disuse and were finally replaced by housing in the 1930s.

The Falkirk Wheel was built as a Millennium Project and was officially opened by the Queen in 2002.  As a part of the entire Edinburgh to Glasgow canal refurbishment project, it has won many design awards and is now a significant tourist attraction. It also seems to me the most idiotic waste of money that I have seen so far on my journey! There is absolutely no demand for it!  In fact the only use seems to be to lift a tourist boat from the lower canal to the upper canal for a twenty minute journey along the canal and back! I wondered whether there might be more narrow-boats on the Forth and Clyde Canal, but in the 20km (12mi) stretch to Kilsyth, I saw precisely one narrow-boat actually using the canal!  I asked a number of officials in the visitor centre who had paid for the wheel, and they were, unsurprisingly, rather defensive about the question, but most suggested that the Lottery Fund had provided much of the money. I have since looked it up on the web to discover that the wheel itself cost £17.5m and the canal refurbishment as a whole cost £84.5m. My informants were being a little economical with the truth as the Lottery Fund provided only £32m of this total. The rest must be public money.  I do appreciate that I really don’t have all the facts, so my view may be a bit distorted, but on a day when the unions are out on strike because they regard the new pension arrangements as unacceptable, it makes me wonder in my Curmudgeonly way how the use of public money on white elephants such as this can possibly be justified!

Talking of which, I had a drink last evening with David and Joyce. David is an electrical technician currently working on the final completion of a hospital construction project and Joyce has a job at Job-Centre Plus, the government employment agency. I was delighted to meet them both, and found them most interesting to talk to. They are both keen travellers preferring to go to warm climates and especially to the US, but they are running out of places to which to go. I tried to persuade them that South Africa was an option, especially in the northern winter, but they clearly feel that the risks are still considerable. I attempted to put their minds at ease. It is interesting though that their considerable travel experience had broadened their minds, something that was immediately obvious.

They can do all this travelling because, like many couples I have met on this journey, they have decided not to have children. I suppose that long-distance walkers are more likely to be childless than the general public, which is why I have met so many, but I have been struck by their views that the short-term sacrifices are in their opinion not worth the long-term benefits. I guess this is the very calculation which is affecting birth-rates in all developed societies, but it is nevertheless interesting to meet so many people who have made this decision and whose views on the subject are remarkably similar. But it won’t help on the pensions front for society in general!

Not that Joyce and David don’t have their own problems. It is in the nature of David’s work that he will have to travel to the next contract and this is increasingly looking like the revamp of an old Heathrow terminal, something that would temporarily separate Joyce and David, as her job is hardly mobile. Joyce has her own problems in that she is today out on strike with the rest of the public service unions over the pensions issue. I asked her whether she thought they would get anywhere and she replied that they didn’t really think so, but that the government might bend a little if really pushed. She said that she hadn’t had an increase in six years, and she was fed up with all the media reporting that life in the public sector was so cushy.

On the way back to my hotel, I did reflect on the fact that the news is also full of all the closures of retail businesses across the country, with all the concomitant job losses. Maybe it’s my age, but I do wonder sometimes if people really understand the depth of this country’s economic problems. Be that as it may, David and Joyce bought me a drink last evening and refused to allow me to reciprocate. Yet again, I can’t help celebrating the wonderful generosity I have encountered from so many strangers on this journey. I feel very privileged.

The entrance to the Union Canal in its tunnel under Falkirk

A brand new tunnel under the Antonine Wall approaching the Falkirk Wheel

A view of the Wheel from above

A sculpture of a cat in front of the Wheel. The business end is at the far end!

The beautiful supporting columns

Looked at end-on. It looks like a demented duck! The sloping structure on the left is the visitor centre

The Wheel in operation. Although it can't be seen, there is a tourist boat in the bucket on the left and the whole wheel is rotating so that it is elevated to the top level

Towns viewed as I walked the canal. They looked new and comfortable

Ditto!

The new M80. Another howling monster, heading for Glasgow.

The pristine Forth and Clyde Canal. It gradually got broader and broader as it went straight as an arrow through an ancient marsh where they found the skeletons of horses and men drowned in the middle of an ancient battle. No canal traffic, though.

A couple of swans and their cygnets appreciating the taxpayers' largesse