SO… WHY “FALKIRK WALKS AND TALKS?”

(apart from “why not?”)

Historically, Falkirk stands at the centre of Scotland: it has connected Edinburgh in the East and Glasgow in the West. To the North is Stirling, the gateway to the Highlands and the North East coastal fringe. to the North. With the mass of the Braes and Southern Uplands to the south, the Forth to the east and the Highlands to the north it has seen and been part of significant historic events throughout the ages.

Falkirk rests at the edge of the Forth on the Antonine Wall, the Roman frontier between North and South, between The Roman Empire and Barbarian tribes to the North. The Antonine Wall was the most northerly frontier of the Roman Empire. It created both a barrier, the Antonine Wall, with a road behind it running between east and west coasts, between the Clyde and the Forth.

In many ways Falkirk is an overlooked jewel in the centre of Scotland. It lacks the strut of Edinburgh with its castle, festival and tattoo and the sheer brash vibrancy of Glasgow, On the road between the two, Falkirk is an understated testament to both ordinary lives and extraordinary events.

And of course, Falkirk has the millenium gifts of the Wheel and the Kelpies, bringing the tourists on and off their buses. It may be that the folk visiting, well, the Kelpies and the Wheel may not “get” Falkirk, but Falkirk is a place, or places, that offer a way into Scotland and its folk, and to its history. That road, and the road that extended north along the Gask Ridge to the barrier of the Highland line were the “go to” land routes, the east-west road behind the wall and the north-south military road that reached beyond Stirling to the north which continued in use for centuries after the Legions left.

Antonine Wall: Watling Lodge

ROMANS KNIGHTS AND JACOBITES

“Better meddle wi’ the de'il than the bairns of Falkirk”

The canals, the Forth and Clyde and, later, the Union Canal were at the centre of the industrial revolution, the revolution that changed the life of people in Scotland for ever. Through the agency of canals industry thrived and grew, driven by coal and iron: the canals created a highway that providing viable routes between the two great competing cities of Scotland. Later the railways when they came pushed the industrial revolution further. Through the Forth and Clyde Valley, over the flat lands and the kerse lands, up the braes above Falkirk, Falkirk was at the forefront of innovation and created an identity based on hard physical labour and iron craft.

This part of Falkirk Walks and Talks focuses on the walking, but the parallel strand, “the 40 men of Bothkennar” will fill in something about that part of Scotland called Bothkennar, a mining community on the Forth, reasonably typical of mining communities that run alongside the Forth-Clyde Valley and the Firth of Forth. A key difference was the existence of Carron Company, the crucible of iron working that sat just outside the Burgh of Falkirk across the Carron. Water, coal and iron. The 40 men are faces and names that are both, in the nature of things, typical and untypical.

Falkirk was about iron, and Falkirk and Grangemouth are central to that industry. So the walk from the Antonine Wall at the Wheel to the Kelpies is a walk to through the heart of the industrial revolution. The walk from the Kelpies to the Kincardine Bridge (ah…. the Kincardine Bridge! Don’t ya just love it?) connects the John Muir Way to the Fife Coastal Path and well, I could go on but why not take a gander yourself?