Of course Thursday being a working day for the Wilde household the kids were at school, Malcolm was in Somerset for a conference and Marina doing her executive thing at her office. So we had the day to ourselves and sorted out a couple of places to visit.

Always wanted to see the Falkirk Wheel, an amazing piece of engineering that replaced a great number of locks on the Forth & Clyde and Union canals. What used to take around 8 hours passing through the locks now takes only 4 minutes and is completely free for boats.

You can see the whole in not 4 minutes but in 39 seconds.

Being the good tourists we are we took the boat ride and used the Wheel, a most amazing ride.

Then onto Stirling Castle which we have seen several times from the motorway but never visited. Built by James IV of Scotland it is a formidable fortress that was used to keep the English out.

I'm having to rush this as we are all about to head for the Highlands and the Isle of Skye so I'll throw a few pictures up together with ones of Ed and Archie, Malcolm and Marina's two dogs, this is were we got our canine fix.

The Falkirk Wheel and Stirling Castle