There are small canals that run through much of the countryside in Scotland, connecting most (if not all) major cities and towns. They are narrow, hardly 20 feet wide, and used to be the major transportation routes between cities, especially for merchants. Like many things (for example, the horse, the carraige), they went out of fashion with the coming of the steam engine. For many decades, most of these quaint mini-rivers (by Eastern US standards anyway) had stood stagnating, officials unsure as to what to do with them. But today, a new use has come for them: recreation and yes, even residential.

So we took it upon ourselves last weekend to go on a sojourn to the country to see some of what these canals had to offer. The one that runs through Edinburgh is the Union Canal, which runs from the capital to Stirling, where is goes through the Fallkirk Wheel (the world's only rotating wheel lock of it's size, picture a sort of ferris wheel type structure that moves boats) and diverges into another canal that goes on elsewhere. We took the local bus out as far as we could go, about 8 miles from the center of town to a village called Ratho. All is very quiet in these villages, as its is the low season, but from what we could tell, in the summer the small place is hoppin with local tourism. There are narrow boats (thin canal boats, built to navigate the narrow passages and aqueducts of the canals) for sale and for holiday rent all along the "docks." Very much like the boats you can see in "Chocolat" (you know, with Johnny Depp as a gypsy? Yeah, THAT movie), they are colorful and bohemian, and I decided that I would quite like to live on one. So if we get kicked out of our flat at the end of six months, maybe we'll look into bubying one. :-)

It was a chilly early afternoon when we set out, but the sun soon came out, illuminating the last of the fall leaves outside Edinburgh. We could see Arthur's Seat and the castle from Ratho, and I groaned at how far away it all looked. How far do we have to walk back? The plan was to go all the way to Fountainbridge, where we could stop for dinner. So we hefted our light day-packs on and began. It wasn't long before we ran into an older gentleman who was staring curiously across the canal. As we passed, he stopped us and pointed, asking, "What do you suppose that is?" We followed his gaze to an earthen mound with a concrete door peeking up at us from the thick underbrush. We puzzle for a few moment, until Jonmikel comes up with the (most brilliant) idea that it looks like a bunker to keep things cold, such as ice chipped from the frozen winter canal. The gentle completely agreed, mentioning that there is an old manor house just out of view, so it would make perfect sense to have a refridgeration area near by (the manor to which he was referring is now a nice little country club, complete with golf course). He then turned to us as an after thought a mentioned that we had American accents. "I'm from America, you know." "Oh?" was our reply. Apparently the man was born in Chicago the year Prohibition was repealed (Yay for Repeal Day!), and he joked that the government was so upset they had to deport him. His family had been in the States for a long time but returned to live with family just before WWII. He left us with a laugh and a remark about ho great our accents were (the second person to do so here; I have to admit that I'm not used to people liking my accent. Even in Morocco, my host father and brother constantly had laughs at the expense of my long, drawn-out words, which now I hear in other American accents quite easily).

The rest of our trek was wonderfully uneventful, passing through countryside and suburbs (both hideously Section-8 and wonderfully wealthy and old fashioned, but very little in between), and passing past narrow boats as they made their way back to the countryside. One was a floating restaurant out for private hire for a minimum of 8 people, which if we knew 6 other people would be a ton of fun. We passed a shinty match, the first time seeing it for both of us Yanks. Shinty is the precursor of hockey, brought to Canada by the Scottish back in the day. It's... lawn hockey. And cause for much shouting and excitement from where we stood. We also managed to avoid some intense-looking swans who thought we had food (we didn't, which can be moderately deadly when it comes to swan encounters). We also passed over major roadways, and it was amazing to me to think that you could be in a boat sailing over cars driving on the road. It must be just as odd from below, seeing a boat sail over your car.

We covered about 9 miles in about 3-and-a-half meandering, relaxing hours, before we stopped for an early dinner. it would be another mile-and-a-half to get back home, split up by a stop at a local pub called Shakespeare's for a nice cheesecake and to catch the end of a football match between Liverpool and... somebody else who nobody seemed to to be rooting for, so in the long run I guess the opponent didn't really matter.