Student Bloggers

During February I got the opportunity to go on two Arcadia Excursions and I am very glad that I went on them! It was nice to have a way to see the things we saw on the trips with an easy way to get around. The first excursion was the Falkirk Day Trip. The weather ended up being rather snowy by the end of the day, but as a California girl, it was fun and different for me. Plus the snow made the landscape beautiful! The day started with a tour of the Kelpies. These are two large metal sculptures that mark the intersection of canals in Falkirk. The sculptures are two 30-meter tall Clydesdale horse heads made of metal. The artist responsible for the beautiful creations wanted to honor an old Scottish folktale about the Kelpies, as well as pay tribute to the horses that worked for so many years pulling barges on the canals. Kelpies are water monsters that take the form of beautiful black horses on land. The legend says that they appear near the shores of lochs to lure people into the water, where the Kelpie will devour them under the surface. 

The two sculptures were modeled after real Clydesdale horses, Duke and Baron. The horses came to the opening of the park and one of Duke’s horse shoes is still there as a memento. Next we went to the Falkirk Wheel. This is a rotating boat lift that moves boats from the Forth and Clyde Canal to the Union Canal. That day we also went to the site of a Roman fort along The Antonine Wall. This was a wall constructed by the Romans to stretch from the Firth of Forth to the Firth of Clyde, all the way across the island. The purpose of the wall was to keep the Picts, or early Britons out of the part of the Britain that the Romans had successfully conquered. Unfortunately, the snow covered everything, so all we really saw was a field. But it was also extremely beautiful, so it was not a problem. 

The second trip was to the Scottish Borders. We went to Melrose Abbey, an old cathedral that was burned during one of the Jacobite rebellions. It was stunning and I really enjoyed it. We also went to Rosslyn Chapel, which was in the Da Vinci Code. Supposedly, the Holy Grail is buried underneath it. I don’t know about that, but I do know that the cat that lives there is very cute! We took a pit stop at Scott’s viewpoint, which is a famous picture stop, and then made our way back to Edinburgh. I was very glad to have the opportunity to go see these things, and having transportation and someone to plan it for me was fantastic!