Day: 020
Date: Monday, 20 June 2022
Start: Auchinstarry (after train/bus from Edinburgh)
Finish: Linlithgow
Daily Kilometres: 33
GPX Track: Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos
Total Kilometres: 567
Weather: Cool to mild and mostly sunny.
Accommodation: Hotel
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Pastries
Lunch: Tuna & sweetcorn sandwich/Egg & mayonnaise sandwich
Dinner: Chilli chicken & rice/Beef & Chinese vegetables & rice
Aches: Both still suffering bad head cold symptoms
Highlight: In an otherwise fairly boring day’s walking along canal towpaths, two pieces of canal engineering, one new and one old, were the highlights. The first was the Falkirk Wheel, opened in 2002, which raises canal boats 35m, replacing eleven lochs (taking a day to transit) dismantled in the 1930s. The second was the Falkirk Tunnel, 630m long and built 200 years ago which takes the Union Canal under part of Falkirk. It was dank, fairly dark and very atmospheric with water dripping from the ceiling the whole way through.
Lowlight: Poor health for both of us took some of the enjoyment out of the walking today.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
We woke at 6:00am after another fitful night’s sleep, both with head cold symptoms and not feeling particularly motivated, and left our accommodation around 6:45am. It was a lovely walk through a relatively quiet Edinburgh on a beautiful sunny morning to Waverley Station where we arrived just in time (running the last 20m) to catch a train departing at 7:15am. Julie, who was trying cough discreetly into her neck buff on the train, was clearly not popular with the young guy across the aisle and he soon donned a mask.
We left the train at Croy, caught a bus back to the Clyde & Forth Canal where we finished on Saturday, and began walking eastwards. The weather was perfect and the rural scenery pretty, but the paved towpath seemed to go on forever. However, we made good time and just before noon reached the Falkirk Wheel (see above). It was apparent that a tour boat was soon to be raised on the wheel, so we found a bench at a good vantage point and had a break waiting for the action to start. Eventually it did, with one tour boat being raised while another was lowered using the very clever concept.
We then climbed up to the Union Canal, to which the boat had been raised, and walked through a short tunnel at the same time as the boat. From there we followed the Union Canal towpath eastwards reaching, after another couple of kilometres, the Falkirk Tunnel (see above). While we were walking through, a group of touring cyclists with loaded panniers, who had ignored “Cyclists Dismount” signs, passed us coming the other way, only managing to do so on the narrow path because we pressed ourselves hard up against the wet tunnel walls. Not very polite. In contrast, we had some very friendly conversations with other walkers and cyclists we encountered during the day.
After more of the Union Canal we detoured off, following the route suggested by our navigation app (Maps.me) for the last four kilometres, to our accommodation in Linlithgow. In town, coming the other way on the other side of the road, we were amused to see a group of shirtless schoolboys on their way home showing off their lily-white Scottish tans.
We checked into our hotel around 5:00pm and later had take-out Chinese from the shop next door. Train strike tomorrow. We would have been in trouble if it had been today.
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