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Falkirk
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Southeast of Stirling along the south bank of the widening Forth Estuary, farmland gives way to industry, notably BP's gargantuan petrochemical plant nearby at Grangemouth. The lights and fires of the refineries are spectacular at night, and inspired Bertrand Tavernier to make his dour 1979 sci-fi film
Death Watch
in Scotland. Strangely, given its nondescript industrial surroundings,
FALKIRK
- located about halfway between Stirling and Edinburgh on the M9 motorway - has a good deal of visible history, going right back to the remains of the Roman Antonine wall. It was also the site of two major battles, one in 1298, when William Wallace's army fell victim to the English under Edward I, and the other in 1746, when Bonnie Prince Charlie's disintegrating force, retreating northwards, sent the Hanoverians packing in one of its last victories. Traditionally a livestock centre, Falkirk became an industrial node with the development of the now-redundant Carron Ironworks, founded in 1759, which manufactured "carronades" (small cannons) for Nelson's fleet. The town was further transformed later in the eighteenth century by the construction of first the Forth and Clyde Canal, allowing easy access to Glasgow and the west coast, and then the Union Canal, which continued the route through to Edinburgh. Just twenty years later, the trains arrived, and the canals gradually fell into disuse.
Falkirk is now the focal point for the massive ?78 million
Millennium Link
project. This has restored the canals to working order in recent years, bringing to life a valuable part of the country's industrial heritage and also encouraging leisure activities, from walking or cycling along the towpaths to canal boat trips. At the interchange of the two canals in Falkirk, in place of an exhausting flight of eleven locks, the Union Canal from Edinburgh has been diverted to a point a mile west of the town centre where the remarkable
Falkirk Wheel
is set to become the most impressive engineering spectacle in Scotland since the building of the Forth Rail Bridge. Over 100ft high, the awe-inspiring steel wheel uses two giant caissons to lower up to four boats at a time from the Union Canal down to a holding basin on the Forth and Clyde Canal. Visitors will be able to take a 40-minute trip on a boat which traverses the newly built section of the Union Canal and the Wheel itself, before being dropped off at a high-tech new
visitor's centre
(
) by the side of the basin. Other useful information
for tourists (each section contains more specific sub-sections): |
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United Kingdom,
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