We left London on Wednesday for New Lanark and Edinburgh Scotland. New Lanark was an interesting place, its the home of Robert Owen's powerloom community and has beautiful waterfall hikes surrounding it. New Lanark was an old cotton mill place, and Robert Owen basically invented a whole new way of living for the people of the New Lanark area, it was a community -- that there was not much getting away from. Way back then, they had their own store where community members could go and buy all of their food, dishes, etc in one place. Prices were kept low, and the store accepted New Lanark Money, which is what the mill-workers were paid in. Robert Owen kept everything really tidy and used positive reinforcement to achieve high standards of work at a quick pace in his mills. He also was a big advocate of education and created the first kindergarden and was for child labor laws. All the history was neat, but my favorite part of being there was when Barb, Kelly, and I went on a run through the waterfall hiking trails. It was amazing!! We ended up being on our run looking at scenery (and watching our steps very carefully) for almost an hour. It was incredible.
Loved it so much we woke up early to do it again (shock, i know) and this time Maggie joined in. We then went through the "museum" of New Lanark. such a tourist trap and quite lame virtual experience ride. it was called the "Annie McLeod experience" and quite an experience it was. You sat in a two person car and floated your way around a curvy tunnel where a young girl talked about her life in the milling town, all the while you reheard everything being played for the cart behind you when you weren't around the corner all that quick enough. There was a beautiful rooftop garden at the end of the self-guided tour.
At the end of the tour we grabbed our bag lunch (they eat butter and turkey sandwiches here, i do NOT recommend it) and headed to the Glengoyne Distillery via a scenic route to avoid the Pope who was leaving Edinburgh to go to London. At Glengoyne we were able to each have 2 different glasses of whiskey, (scotch as they call it in Scotland..) once at the beginning of the tour and once at the end to see the difference between the 10 year old and the 17 year old versions. Neither were very good...
We then headed to the Falkirk Wheel, an engineering feat, that involves a rotating wheel to get canal boats from one canal to another when they are at two very different altitudes. It uses Archimedes principle of floating bodies. (Nerdy).
But we got to go on the wheel and on they way down got some fabulous views of Scotland.
What a pretty country.
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