Stirling

The Wallace Memorial

From the top of the Wallace memorial

We arrived at our couchsurfers house (or flat) to meet Martin and his roommate Kerry. We went out for dinner and had some haggis balls as well as some chicken pasta thing that was pretty ordinary. The haggis was ok – nothing special. A walk home was a little difficult as I was still sore from the soccer I played on Saturday. I guess preseason really does work, cause you can’t play a hard running 90 minute game without more than 3 weeks of sporadic running. We slept on the floor of their living room which was pretty small – stark contrast to Ireland. Martin has a projector set up in the living room – which makes me think that is it very interesting to see what others’ have in their houses. Patrick had no TV, where Martin has a huge projector with speakers.. Each to their own I guess.

The next day we went to the Bannockburn heritage center, which was closed for winter – it’s not winter yet…!! Booo. It was supposed to tell us all about Scottish wars and independence… so there was 2 hours we just saved. We then went to the William Wallace memorial, to which I will describe in a little bit more detail.

The Wallace memorial has been the best part of Scotland so far. We arrived in the car park with easy to find car spaces J and bought our ticket into see the tower. The tower is about a ten minute walk which was annoying with my legs how they were, but it was really nothing. There was a courtesy bus going up but we only reaslied that halfway up. I got the audio guide (which was a little old but stlll worked fine) for 1 pound extra, and up the spiral staircase. The memorial is structured with rooms that are positioned on the way with information about wallace’s life and the battles that he was in, as well as why he is such an important figure in Scotish history. His sword was there, as well as another room full of famous Scotsman – each one that had contributed to society by inventing something, or writing famous poetry. The audio guide was invaluable in that room, as the info about the people was limited. The staircase continued up to 62m I think to which I was treated to the views of the whole valley and across to the mountains, which I had all to myself, as I went a little slower to listen to everything. The architecture is also much different to things we have seen in Europe, the top is designed in a much different way – from afar it looks like a ruin, but from close it is meticulously designed. It may have helped that it wasn’t busy, but I still would have liked it I think. There are some photos I will add if I remember.

The tunnel through to the other waterway at Falkirk

The wheel itself

Our next destination was to the water wheel in falkirk, this connects two streams together via a huge wheel (does the job of a loch). A boat drives into the bottom of the wheel or the lift) and it carries the boat up to a bridge (kinda) that is full of water so the boat can travel across the bridge and then through a tunnel - into the next canal. It is impressive. We then went home – had huge pizza’s and then went to bed after watching some UK comedy tv.