Our Grand Tour of Scotland: 2010 - Part 6: Scotland's Industrial Heritage

As the weather was mixed during the first week of our grand tour, we bears and Tony decided to investigate Scotland's inudstrial heritage and keep out of the rain.  This involved 3 trips:

• Ben Cruachan Power Station
• Summerlea Industrial Heritage
• Titan Crane, Clydebank

Ben Cruachan Power Station
We drove to the Ben Cruachan power station, which has a rather nice visitors' centre overlooking Loch Awe.  The visit included a short film about the power station hidden deep within the mountain, photographs taken during the building of the power station, and a bus tour inside Ben Cruachan itself!  Being inside the mountain and seeing part of a working hydro-power station was great fun, and Bev said the damp, musty smell reminded her of the Glasgow underground railway.

Summerlea Industrial Heritage, Airdrie:
We have been here before, but it has recently had a facelift courtesy of the lottery fund, so we all decided to go back and visit this fascinating museum.  The facelift has allowed the museum to make some exhibits more user/bear-friendly, so we got to operate an iron foundry and play with the displays, which was great fun.
Another improvement is that they have opened up a stretch of the canal so that you can walk along it and see the kind of industrial machinery that would have been used.  Here is an example, though we have no idea what this machine was used for:

Other exhibits include a working coal mine, workers' cottages, a saw mill, and a working tram to take you around the site.

Titan Crane, Clydebank:

This was a fascinating trip to one of only 4 Titan cranes remaining on the Clyde.  The crane is a Category A Listed Historical Structure, so it was decided to turn it into a tourist attraction, with a lift taking visitors 150 feet up to the jib platform.  This is covered in a strong mesh flooring, which means that you can see the ground when you look down - definitely not for people or bears with a fear of heights!  However, the views up and down the Clyde are amazing!

You can follow the path or get the bus from the booking office, which takes you past the old John Brown shipyard, slipway and fitting out basin where ships like the QE2 were built and launched.  The Titan Crane was used to lift the engines and other loads into the ships in the fitting-out basin.

This was a great day out and we thoroughly enjoyed the views from the top of the crane.  An attraction not to be missed unless you suffer from vertigo!

So what did we bears and Tony learn from all of this?  Well, we can now operate an iron foundry, we know how a hydro electric power station works and how huge cranes were used in the shipbuilding and ship fitting industries.  And while the boys were out on their educational tours, Phoebe and the Nice Lady were enjoying themselves at a health spa where they were having pampering sessions.