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Comment by splonk

16 days ago

I am exactly the type of nerd that is super excited about this kind of engineering, to the point where I visited a couple years ago and rode a boat on the wheel when I happened to be in Scotland. I mentioned having gone to a local in Edinburgh and got a very confused "why would you ever go to Falkirk?" It's a pretty easy half-day trip out of Edinburgh or Glasgow, and I recommend it if you have the time.

One fun thing if you have kids is that the playground there has some demonstrations of Archimedean principles, like how an Archimedes screw works. Also, I don't keep many souvenirs of my travels, but I do have a refrigerator magnet of the Falkirk wheel that spins freely. It doubles as a cat toy.

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splonk

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jimnotgym  16 days ago

>easy half-day trip out of Edinburgh

Another way to think about it is to stop somewhere outside of Edinburgh. Edinburgh is an easy half-day trip away. Walk 200 yards of the Royal Mile from the castle. It just repeats with the same kind of tourist shops for the rest of it. Now get back in your car and go and see some of Scotland!

  • ErroneousBosh  16 days ago

    But don't do the thing that American tourists do where they say "Oh we're staying in Edinburgh and on Wednesday we're going to drive up to Skye to see Dun-vay-gin Castle because it's our ancestral seat because we're totally MacLeods you know"

    You won't be able to drive from Edinburgh to even Kyle and back in a day, never mind up to Dunvegan. You just won't.

    I could drive you from Edinburgh to Dunvegan and back in a day but I can absolutely guarantee you're going to hate every single terrifying mile of the journey and you won't get to see much.

    • sjclemmy  16 days ago

      Which reminds me of a weekend I took a few years ago where we drove to Edinburgh from Manchester on day 1 then up to Arisaig on day 2 to camp on the beach - then back to Edinburgh for a wedding on day 3 and then back to Arisaig the next day to continue the long weekend. Then full day drive back to Manchester.

    • tolien  16 days ago

      I did see a Reddit thing where some tourists were planning to stay in the Lake District and visit Edinburgh and Stonehenge, all during winter.

      Could've been ragebait, to be fair - they weren't interested when people pointed out that things like weather, hours of daylight, travel time were all going to be against them (or even that the Lake District is a pretty tourist-friendly place to start with).

    • arethuza  16 days ago

      That's nothing, I had some people ask me if they could drive from Edinburgh to Rome for the day!

    • theoreticalmal  16 days ago

      Apple says Edinburgh to Skye is a 3.5 hour drive, mostly along the A9. My understanding is A roads in the UK are much like USA interstates. What makes the trip terrifying and slower than what Apple says?

      10 replies →

ErroneousBosh  16 days ago

Some friends and I used to cycle to it from Kirkintilloch, after fuelling up in the Brexitspoons on the high street, and then a quick pitstop to take on another pint or so of fuel at Auchenstarry because it's a hell of a long run to the next town (Bonnybridge, Banknock being a bit out of the way).