The last couple of weeks I’ve teased a bit – saying we’re headed to a bucket list adventure… The cruise across the Atlantic was just to get us nearer to the anticipated site (in a fun way!)
Today I will introduce our adventure, but first I’m going to finish a bit about the end of the trans-Atlantic cruise… And the internet is very slow here, and I’m tired, so after uploading a million pictures, I don’t have much room for detail. Maybe I’ll fill it in later. (Not likely!)
We landed in La Havre, France, and we took a tour of Rouen. An incredibly old city, with many buildings from the 1400’s.
The cathedral is ornate and amazing.
I had to include a chocolate shop, which is obviously trying to equal Becky’s chocolate creations!
Some of these buildings are 400 years old! Some were designed to stretch out over the road, but look how they have warped and twisted!
This Bizzy B building is really twisted up now!
A cute little merry-go-round:
This is the site where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. They now have a very interesting chapel as a memorial to her.
Adjacent to the chapel is another modern building, housing a fruit market!
That evening we had dinner with the nice couple we met the day before – Mark and Caroline. We had a great time, and couldn’t stop chatting… so we went up to the game room in the ship and played a round of Scrabble. The game was just an excuse to keep the great conversation going! Super nice folks!
The next morning the ship docked in Dover, England. Note the famous white cliffs!
From there the cruise line took us to Heathrow (London airport) by bus. We then caught a plane to Edinburgh, Scotland. Ever closer to the mystery adventure!
We stayed in a (TINY) hotel just a few blocks from the mighty Edinburgh Castle. I’ve always thought this is the very definition of an awesome castle!
We got there too late to do much that day, but the night view of the castle was great!
Gorgeous buildings surrounded our hotel! (Ours was NOT one of them!)
In the morning, we headed out for the castle:
If you can count the chimneys in this picture, I’d think you ARE a robot!
We couldn’t get in the castle… tickets were sold out for the day! So we ordered some for the next day, and explored the area.
The Camera Obscura is a fascinating device I remember from my first visit to Edinburgh over 50 years ago. It is basically a pinhole camera, oriented vertically, mounted on top of a tower. A mirror on the top can be rotated and aimed so you can see any direction. Almost like a periscope on top of the building, but it projects the image onto a disk a few feet in diameter. They’ve moved it and shortened it in the last 50 years, but it’s still fun.
While I couldn’t take pictures of the Camera Obscura itself, the views from the top of the tower are awesome.
A series of fun-house sort of exhibits let me prove I didn’t gain TOO much weight on the cruise!
All sorts of weird exhibits were there, but this one was one of my favorites. A drawing of Jules Verne’s mysterious island… but when you place a cylindrical mirror on it, the mirror distorts the picture dramatically… and reveals a portrait of Verne!
More castle pictures, because I’m a castle addict.
The next morning we went with a birding guide, Matt, who showed us around many beautiful habitats, and lots of different birds.
Matt laughed about the sign: there is some endangered frog species here, so they get a special sign. Maybe the heron doesn’t mind eating the frogs anyway.
Matt told us about this structure on the horizon… They wanted to make something special to glorify the area, so they started to build a replica of the Greek Parthenon. The humor is that they ran out of money, and never finished it. Some display of intelligence!
A cement arrow points to a monument to the location of bomber training during WWII.
We had a great time with Matt, and saw over 60 species of birds, most of which were new to us!
After finishing about 25,000 steps (really!) with Matt, we went through the castle! We probably didn’t do it justice – we were tired! And I’m tired now, so just look at the pictures!
Pipers and People! Lots of people and activity on the area around the castle.
So finally to the mystery adventure! A little backstory first:
In the 1700’s, the industrial revolution was changing everything in England. Factories were producing goods faster and cheaper than ever before. But how to move raw materials to the factories, and the finished goods to market? Someone got the idea to float goods on barges pulled by horses. That worked well on rivers, but the rivers didn’t always go where they wanted! So they dug canals… all over the country! Something like 4,000 miles of them! They were all the rage, until some bright guy invented the steam train! Soon all the canals fell out of favor, and by the 1900’s, they were mostly abandoned and falling into ruin.
But starting in the 1950’s, they started to be used for recreational boating. Governmental grants helped restore the canals, and now they are popular again.
The canals are fairly narrow, so the boats that use them are narrow also. Narrowboats. Our adventure was to spend a couple weeks on narrowboats. These are very unique craft – about 50 feet long, and only 6 feet 10 inches wide. 17 tons, a flat bottom, a small diesel engine, and inside fitted like a long skinny motorhome. These will be our home for the next couple of weeks!
We will see many swans in the coming days, but this one had a nest right next to the dock!
The icing on the cake for the narrow boat adventure, was a trip in the Falkirk Wheel. The only rotating boat lift in the world, it was built 20 some years ago to replace 11 locks when they were refurbishing the Union canal. (The canal runs from Falkirk to Edinburgh.) The wheel has two basins, like buckets of water, each holding one or two narrowboats. They get sealed in, and the whole structure rotates, lifting or lowering boats about 12 stories. Fun!
Here we get to take our little narrowboat through the wheel.
Kevin, our guide, made sure we got properly into the wheel.
The wheel moves very gently, and in about 5 minutes you’ve completed the cycle! Once on top, you motor down a long bridge to the clifftop, and in very short order enter a creatively lit up tunnel! Then around the corner, and up two locks! A very exciting start to our adventure!
Here’s the wheel in action:
And here’s the trip through the wheel… first looking back, where we’ve just entered the wheel, then looking forward, where we’ll exit. Then through the tunnel, and up two locks. And our adventure has started!!