Built on the site of the 1988 Glasgow Garden Festival, the Glasgow Science Centre is a purpose-built facility featuring three floors dedicated to hands-on science in action. Taking the form of a huge, gleaming, titanium crescent overlooking the Clyde, the building is also home to the best-equipped planetarium in the UK.

As if that wasn’t enough, just to the south we can see the silver dome of Scotland’s only IMAX cinema¹, which has a screen larger than a 5-a-side football pitch, and a 12,000-watt digital sound system.

Most impressive of all from up here however, is the 127 metre-tall Glasgow Tower. This is the tallest floored building in Scotland, and the tallest building in the world which can rotate through a full 360 degrees!

Technically the tower is actually an aerofoil (like an aeroplane wing stood on one end), which is rotated into the wind by computers – allowing it to be exceptionally slim for its height. Impressive stuff, and I hear the views are not bad too.

Thanks to Martin Deutsch. More about the Glasgow Science Centre, the Glasgow Tower and the IMAX film format at, you guessed it, Wikipedia.

Today we’re posting a roundup of the most interesting ways Europe has employed to get canal barges up-and-over stuff. The simplest method is of course a bridge, of which you can see several excellent examples in our previous post, A Canal Across Germany. However sometimes barges need to traverse obstacles that a bridge cannot cross, and Europeland has employed several ingenious solutions to particular geographic problems.

Between Saint-Louis and Arzviller in France, a system was required that enabled the canal to cross the Vosges Mountains. The solution is the Saint-Louis-Arzviller inclined plane, a single structure that replaced 17 locks upon its completion in 1969.

Basically, vessels float into a gigantic bathtub which is then hauled up a 108.7 metre-long ramp at 41°. This vertical change of 44.6 m used to take 8 to 13 hours to traverse, but can now be achieved in just 4 minutes.

Such canal inclined planes are actually not uncommon, but the Saint-Louis-Arzviller example is probably the steepest. In Belgium, engineers have a more traditionally modest angle, but over a much greater distance - the Ronquières inclined plane climbs 68 m vertically, but is nearly 1.5 kilometres long! This time there are two giant bathtubs (actually known as caissons), and the journey takes a much more leisurely 45 minutes to complete.

Seemingly on a roll, Belgian engineers are also responsible for the Strépy-Thieu boat lift - an absolutely monumental machine that dispenses entirely with inclines, and just lifts the barges straight up and down in two counterbalanced caissons¹. The difference between water levels is 73.2 metres, meaning this is officially the world’s tallest boat lift. At least until the new one at the Three Gorges dam is finished anyway…

We already posted the world’s steepest flight of locks, the Caen Hill Flight, so instead here’s the Foxton Locks - a set of ten canal locks consisting of two “staircases” each of five locks. Because the Foxton locks can hold many boats at once, they’ve become a very popular location for Gongoozling - the art of watching activity on UK canals. No, seriously - there’s a Wikipedia page on Gongoozlers and everything.

The best thing about the Foxton locks however, is that we can actually see a barge in one of the locks.

The UK also has two working boat lifts - the Anderton Boat Lift in Cheshire, England, and the awesome Falkirk Wheel in Scotland (which is unfortunately not available on Google Earth or Maps, but Microsoft’s Live Local has a good image of it²).

Although both rely on Archimedes’ Principle, the Falkirk wheel is unique as it is the only rotating boat lift in the world. Barges enter the wheel at the ends of two opposing 15 metre arms, which then rotate through 180° in five and a half minutes, using only the energy it takes to boil 8 kettles!

Read more at Wikipedia about the Saint-Louis-Arzviller inclined plane, the Ronquières inclined plane, the Strépy-Thieu boat lift, the Foxton Locks, the Anderton Boat Lift, and the Falkirk Wheel.

Or, if you’re really interested, “Canal lifts and inclines of the world” by Hans-Joachim Uhlemann seems to be definitive book on this subject.

Thanks to Jel and others.

The Act of Union, passed in 1707, created a political union between the Kingdoms of Scotland and England, meaning that Scotland was directly governed from London for 292 years. In 1997 a referendum of the Scottish people approved the re-establishment of a directly-elected Scottish Parliament. Matters such as education, health and prisons, which used to be dealt with by the Parliament at Westminster, are now decided in Scotland.

The first elections to the Scottish Parliament were held in 1999, the same year that construction began on the building that would be the parliament’s future home.

Designed by the late Enric Miralles, the Parliamentary complex is actually a campus of several buildings, reflecting different architectural styles, with a total floor area of 31,000 square metres.

From this aerial vantage point we can clearly see some of the more striking features of the buildings, such as the 30-metre-long elliptical debating chamber (which contains no supporting columns thanks to a roof fabricated in part by Scottish oil industry welders), as well as the stunning leaf-shaped roof-lights on the Garden lobby and their supporting internal structural lattice of solid oak struts.

As well as being a strikingly adventurous government building, the Parliament also sets new standards in environmental sustainability. A minimum of 80% of the electricity purchased for the building is required to come from renewable sources, and from above we can clearly see the solar panels set into the roof of the Canongate building. These solar panels are used for heating water in the complex, of course this can lead to overheating in the summer, so the building employs a computerised management system which senses the temperature in different parts of the Parliament, and automatically opens windows to keep the building cool.

The Scottish Parliament Building is open to visitors all year round, and you can read more about its often highly controversial history at WIkipedia.

There are 21 cities worldwide that have at sometime been nick-named “Athens of the (something)“. However, two of these cities have taken the name even further and built replicas of Athens’ most famous landmark, the Parthenon.

Nashville, Tennessee acquired the nickname “Athens of the South” in the 1850s by the creation of numerous universities and colleges and being the first southern US city to establish a public school system.

So as the centrepiece of the 1897 World’s Fair, Nashville built the World’s only complete, full scale replica of the Parthenon. The building was originally a temporary structure but they liked it so much it was re-built on proper foundations in the 1920s.

Today the Parthenon serves as an art museum and even features plaster-casts of marble sculptures which adorned the original Parthenon (which are presently held in the British Museum).

In the late 1700s many of Edinburgh, Scotland’s public buildings were built in the Greek neo-classical style, giving rise to the nickname “Athens of the North”.

Then, in 1882, construction began on a Parthenon replica named The National Monument as a memorial to those who died in the Napoleonic Wars. You can clearly see that the structure is only half completed, perhaps due to lack of funding, but some say it was an intentional design.

In stark contrast to public feelings of Nashville’s replica, the locals of Edinburgh generally dislike the Parthenon and it has often been described as “Edinburgh’s Disgrace”.

Previously on Google Sightseeing: Ancient Greece.

Wikipedia Links: Parthenon, Nashville and the National Monument, Edinburgh.

Thanks: Taylor Nelson & James Turnbull

This is Barra Airport, located on the hebridean island of Barra.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, it’s something along the lines of “No, you idiot, that’s a beach!“.

You’re exactly right: Barra airport is the beach. In fact, it’s the only airport in the world where scheduled flights land on a beach.

Of course, that schedule has to change regularly, as the airport’s three runways all become completely unusable during high-tide.

The beach is open to the public, and supposedly good for cockle picking, all you have to do is check at the control tower to see if the airport is currently operational.

More info and ground level pictures here and on Wikipedia

Thanks: Adam Rus & nikitakou

Welcome to the third in a series that has seen competitive homeowners across the globe vying to emulate the affluence of their immediate neighbours - Keeping up with the Joneses Part 3! (Also see part 1 and part 2)

This time we’re in Edinburgh, Scotland, where the residents of Corstorphine appear to have been put under some considerable pressure to become the proud owners of their very own trampoline.

I actually couldn’t believe how many of these things there are - here’s one, and another, and another, and another! In fact the list goes on and on and on and on and on and on! I’d particularly like a shot on one of these ones, just to see if - by leaping from a nearby roof - you could make it all the way to one of next-door’s trampolines…

While we’re on the subject, Wilfred van Breda sent us this link to a barge in Rotterdam harbour, which he claims is owned by a friend and actually has a trampoline on board. Hmmm.

The same vessel actually appears elsewhere in the harbour too. Unless of course, this type of craft comes standard with a trampoline…

Thanks to Wilfred van Breda.

Not to get too political for a website dedicated to things from above, but today I’d like to look into the United Kingdom’s devolved assemblies, if you’ll join me…

Back in 1999, after a couple of referendums, the UK government established devolved assemblies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to make key decisions affecting the lives of local people.

Northern Ireland’s home rule was originally established at Stormont in 1920 until 1974, so in 1999 they already had a suitable building to use. Although, the assembly has been under suspension since 2003 so the building is probably not seeing much use at the moment.

The Welsh Senedd is located in the capital of Cardiff. Designed by British architect Richard Rogers it cost £67 million and was opened March 1, 2006.

Unfortunately Google Earth’s aerial photography was taken sometime before that date and the assembly is seen as just a large building site.

In comparison the Scottish Parliament (designed by the late Catalan architect Enric Miralles), was finished two years earlier than the Welsh assembly, but cost an estimated 431 million pounds.

Despite the staggering cost, in March 2006 the building began falling apart when a roof beam slipped from its hinges during a debate…

Wikipedia: Devolution, Northern Ireland Assembly, National Assembly for Wales, Scottish Parliament

Thanks: AndrewAnorak & Myself

Aliens have been trying to communicate with us puny humans for years now, usually via the confusing medium of drawing circles in Britain’s fields.

But a recent trend shows them branching out into more direct forms of communication with actual words being carved into our crops.

Of course they haven’t fully developed a grasp of our primitive languages, as seen in this example of childishly rude crop writing just beside Edinburgh Airport.

What, oh mighty alien lifeforms, are you trying to tell us?