Kelpies

I leave the wheel on what's becoming an increasingly warm day and head to find a petrol station and some lunch. Judging by the pre 1900's buildings Falkirk must have been a prosperous place in it's heyday, but it's certainly suffered in recent years. There are signs of investment though such as the wheel and the next site to visit.

I fill the bike up at Tescos petrol station and push it out of the way so another car can get into the pump whilst I'm browsing the meal "deals". Spicy chicken pasta and pickled onion Monster Much if I remember rightly. The lady at the till couldn't understand how another car had filled up before I'd paid for the fuel and I really struggled to decipher her accent, but I just kept smiling and waving my credit card around. The racket of the blowing exhaust as I left the forecourt had a dozen pairs of eyes locked upon me, all thinking idiot. At least I presume it was because of the exhaust...

Five miles east of the Falkirk Wheel and standing at the entrance to the Forth and Clyde Canal are the Kelpies. They're a pair of 30m high sculptures of horses heads made from steel framework with stainless steel cladding. Under the moody skies they are utterly entrancing. The sculptures are partly based on the Scottish mythological watery horses, and partly on the Clydesdale draught horses that were instrumental to so many industries in the area. I parked up in the free (for bikes) car park amongst a smattering of other bikes including a luggage laden GS on Hungarian plates and walked the quarter mile or so through the park to the base of the Kelpies. I spent an age eating my lunch looking at the way the light reflected off the stainless panels and just people watching everyone else playing in the park or taking selfies.

I'd purposely not seen pictures of either the wheel or the Kelpies before I visited, I wanted to experience them in the flesh without any previous expectations and neither disappointed at all


 
And since we've not seen our furry adventurers in this thread for a while:


 
The Kelpies are in what's known as the Helix Park, just off the M9 and very much worth a visit if you're heading through Scotland. With both the bike and I fully fuelled I found a nearby postbox to send a couple of postcards I'd bought in John o'Groats then joined the M9 south towards the border.

Location: Falkirk, UK

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